Not Long At All
by Lucilla Darkate
Summary: Sarah makes a deal with Jareth and trades her freedom for her life. Jareth has moved on without her, but never completely forgotten. One thing about living forever. . . you have all the time in the world. . . Don't you?[Complete]
1. 1

The verb "to give" was considered obscene,

and was scrawled on lavatory walls. The verb

"to love" connoted nothing but desire.

-- A.C.H. Smith, _Labyrinth_

The chill night air hit Sarah in the face as she stepped out onto the sidewalk. She pulled her coat tighter around herself and started down the street with her head tucked down against the wind. Winter in Manhattan was like living in a Christmas snow globe.

She didn't know where she was going when she left her apartment, not that it really mattered; she just had to get out, go somewhere, anywhere that provided some form of human contact, no matter how remote. The thought of sitting alone in her little two bedroom apartment, watching T.V. with the lights off and not really aware of it when the programs changed because she hadn't actually been watching it at all, made her want to slit her wrists. Sarah couldn't even remember the last time she had finished a book, or listened to a song all the way through, or dropped a quarter in the cup of the beggar on the corner. She knew that she did these things, but there were void places in her mind where these mundane memories should have been.

She had just hung up the phone not twenty minutes before. It was Friday, and every Friday she received Toby's weekly obligatory phone call. He was eleven now, and eleven year old boys were interested in things like bicycles and skateboards and how many live worms they could fit into a single pocket. Sarah understood this, but what she could not understand was why she could spend fifteen minutes on the phone with her little brother and never hear about any of these things. She did not know the name of a single one of his friends, or what he liked to do on the weekend, or how many times he had been sent to the principal's office. She knew that he had a dog, and that the dog's name was Jake only because she had once heard her stepmother in the background yelling at the animal for barking.

Toby did not exist for her anymore. He was not part her life, not really, just as she supposed she was no longer part of his life. If she ever had been at all. Her stepmother was responsible, Sarah knew that without being told, and the woman probably had her reasons, but that didn't make it right.

It wasn't fair, not one bit, but that's the way it was.

She walked into the corner grocery. She knew the boy behind the counter, so she smiled at him.

"Hey, Miss Williams," he said, sounding bored.

"Hello, Sam," She said. "Have you got your essay done for Monday?"

She could see him consider lying about it and felt like laughing. She was pleasantly surprised when he told her the truth. "Not yet."

Sarah just nodded and turned down the isle near the coolers to get milk.

She taught English at the local high school to mostly stupid children with no desire to learn. Sometimes, rarely, she would encounter a student with above average intelligence and a deep desire to know things. Samuel Windham was one of the intelligent ones; his only problem was that he firmly believed that he already knew everything. In Sarah's opinion, that put him right down there with the lowest of whining, puling idiots.

She hated her job, but so did more than seventy-five percent of the human population, and besides, it paid the bills.

Sarah's true passion was story telling. She loved to write, and had published several short stories in fantasy magazines under the pseudonym Anna Williams, including one about a girl lost in a maze trying to reach a castle and save her baby brother from wicked goblins. She had extended that one into a novel of some two hundred pages, but had so far been unable to sell it to a publisher. It was 'too dark', It didn't make sense. Sarah's favorite one was 'it lacks a sympathetic protagonist.' She'd sat down and had a good hard laugh when she read that, then put the refusal slip in a drawer with every intention of having it framed.

"I don't know why this book is such a big deal, Sarah," Laura, her friend and editor had commented after the manuscript had been turned down for the fifty-eighth time. "Adults won't read it, and it would give kids nightmares. Just do what every other author does; put it away somewhere and forget it. Start something new."

Sarah had put it in a new envelope that very day and mailed it off again. Somebody would take it eventually. How many times had the _Wizard of Oz_ been refused before L. Frank Baum finally found a publisher? And now it was part of American pop culture. Every kid over five knew the words to _We're off to see the Wizard._ Not that Sarah's story about the Labyrinth would ever compete with _The Wizard of Oz_. She knew it wouldn't, but it was things like that that kept aspiring writers going after the fifty-eighth refusal slip.

Laura was right about one thing though. It was ten years later and Sarah was still having nightmares. Nightmares where she was lost in the very depths of the Labyrinth, or falling down a dark tunnel where unseen hands grabbed her, and pinched her, and laughed when she screamed. But the worst dreams were the ones where she could feel the Goblin King lurking just beyond the shadows, and knew that he watched her, that he always had. She woke from those dreams shaking, drenched in sweat, and feeling violated.

Sarah had just picked up two cans of cat food and turned to go to the register when two men came into the store carrying guns.

"Nobody fucking move!" the first one, a small untidy looking man with a Glock shouted. He pointed the gun at Sam as the second man entered the store behind him. "Nobody move, and nobody has to get hurt."

The second man, much taller than the first with a dim, semi-retarded grin on his face, promptly made him a liar by shooting a young man in a leather coat who had dropped his six-pack of beer.

"Shit!" screamed the first robber. "God fucking dammit Alan!"

"Sorry, Len," the large man said. He did not sound sorry.

Sam had gone very still with Len's gun pointed at his chest. His eyes flicked to Sarah, then nervously back to the gunman. What the hell did he expect her to do about it? Being a teacher made her an authority figure, she knew that, but if these two whack-jobs had been answerable to figures of authority, they wouldn't have been robbing a Quick Mart at gun point, now would they?

"Look man," Sam said, his voice shaking, "Take whatever you want, alright? Take everything. Just don't—"

"Shut up," Len snarled, jabbing the gun at him. "Put the money in a bag."

"Wh—What?"

"Put the fucking money in a bag!"

Sam opened the register and started emptying the cash into a paper sack as quickly as he could, with his hands shaking like they were going to rip free and run away all on their own.

Breaking out of her paralysis, Sarah crouched down in the isle and looked around for a place to hide. There was a chip rack a couple of isles down, but it didn't look like it would make much of a hiding place, even if the gunmen were as dim as cockroaches.

"Hurry the fuck up!" Len yelled at Sam, who yelped and looked like he was going to faint. "Fine, fine, give me the goddamn bag already. Jesus."

"Hey Len," Alan said.

Sarah froze, her heart going so fast it felt like her chest was going to explode. Alan was looking at her intently. Apparently he had thought that the kid with the leather jacket was the only customer in the store. Sarah didn't know what had alerted him to her presence, but she fervently prayed to whatever gods were listening that he would turn around and forget about her.

Instead, he raised his gun and pointed it at her. He fired, and Sarah gave a startled cry when the milk she had still been holding leaped out of her hand and smacked into the glass doors of the coolers, spraying milk from a bullet hole.

"For Christ's sake, Alan, what?" Len yelled.

"There's a lady."

"That's great. Come on, I got the money. Let's get the fuck outta here."

"Let me take just one more shot," Alan said, sounding morbidly like a kid at a carnival shooting at plastic ducks with an air rifle.

Sarah tried to make herself move, but she couldn't. She was staring directly into Alan's small blue eyes, and there was nothing there for her to relate to.

"No, man, come on, lets get outta here before the cops come." Len grabbed the paper bag with the money and started for the door.

Then Alan took his shot and Sarah slowly fell back against an isle of candy. Distantly, she heard the chime of the bells over the door and knew that they were gone. Somewhere Sam was saying "Oh man, oh man," over and over in a small childlike voice. Sarah was surprised that it didn't hurt. She'd always thought that being shot would hurt, but she couldn't really feel anything, except something wet soaking into her clothes.

She looked down and saw blood coming out of a hole in her stomach in little pulsing gushes. Her jeans were a deep maroon color, which was strange because Sarah would never wear something as tacky as maroon jeans, and the floor around her was turning red as well, a bright garish color under the florescent lights.

"Miss Williams?" Sam called. "Are you okay?"

"I think I'm dying," she said serenely, but Sam didn't hear her. He called again, but she wasn't listening anymore.

She sighed and touched the bloody fabric of her sweater and rubbed it between her fingers. It was true what all the novels said, blood did smell like pennies, at least, when there was this much of it, it did.

"Jareth," She whispered, for no reason that she could think of except in that moment, she desperately wanted to see him. "Jareth," she said again, in a whisper this time, then slid to lay down on the cold tiles and go to sleep.

Just before she lost consciousness, she could swear she smelled burned sugar and heard the thrumming vibration of music.


	2. 2

Sarah knew that she was alive only because she was quite sure that if she were dead, she would not be in so much pain. Something cold and wet touched her face and she turned her cheek away to avoid it.

"Wakey, wakey, pretty lady," a small, shrill voice said next to her ear.

Sarah grimaced and opened her eyes. She took one look at the little mangy goblin and promptly closed them again. It isn't real, it isn't real, it isn't real she repeated over and over in her head.

This idea was quickly banished when the creature patted her cheeks with his wrinkly hands, then said, "I think she fainted."

"Sarah."

Sarah's eyes opened wide at the sound of that voice. "Jareth?"

He moved to stand directly over her, in her line of sight. He looked very much the same as she remembered him, pale and lovely and so very, very dangerous. He was dressed entirely in shades of white and grey, with what looked like owl feathers braided into his hair.

"What are you doing here?" she asked. "Somebody will see you."

"No. I have stopped time for the present. No one will see me." He smiled, his strange eyes flashing with mirth. "But I appreciate your concern for my welfare, Sarah."

"What are you doing here?" she asked again.

Jareth lifted an eloquent brow. "You summoned me here. Don't you remember?"

"I did not."

He shrugged indifferently. "Oh, well, I suppose we should be off then, Midge," he said to the little goblin, who cackled. "It would seem we made a mistake. Our assistance is in fact not needed here, and we wouldn't want to hang around somewhere that we're not wanted, now would we?"

"No, your majesty," Midge agreed.

Sarah rolled her eyes. Even for Jareth, who had a penchant for the immensely theatrical, it was a bit much. "Fine, what do you want?"

Jareth laughed and folded his arms over his chest. "I don't really think it's a matter of what I want. After all, I'm not the one bleeding to death on the floor of some shoddy little mercantile."

Sarah looked down at herself, at all the blood—Christ, there was so much blood—and suddenly felt like screaming. Or crying. It didn't really matter which at the moment. Maybe both, wouldn't that be a sight? Screaming, and crying, and bleeding to death on the floor of some 'shoddy little mercantile', surrounded by cat food, milk, candy bars and her own lifeblood.

"Help me," she said suddenly. She looked up at Jareth and saw a flicker of something behind his mismatched eyes, but before she could identify what it was, it was gone. "Jareth, help me."

"Pity, pity, the pretty lady," Midge said in a sing-song voice.

"You're mortal, Sarah," Jareth said. "Mortals die all the time. What makes you think your life means any more than hundreds of others?"

Sarah met his gaze and held it. "Maybe to the world, it doesn't matter," she said slowly. From the corner of her eye she could see the goblin, Midge, touch her blood with his fingertips then bring it to his mouth to taste. "But I think maybe to you, it does."

Jareth's eyes narrowed. "You've refused me once already, why should I offer you anything now?"

"What offer? Fear me? Love me?" Sarah chided, giving his words back to him. Mocking him.

"Yes," Jareth growled.

Sarah dropped her eyes. "How can you love something that you fear?" she whispered.

Jareth knelt beside her and turned her face to his. "Like this," he said, then kissed her, gently. It was a brief kiss, a soft meeting of lips, a single stroke of the tongue, but it sent a bolt of pure desire to each and every nerve in Sarah's body.

However, some of the nerves did not appreciate being awoken, and said so with sharp stabbing pains. "Christ," Sarah hissed. "Don't do that."

Jareth leaned back with an utterly unrepentant grin on his handsome face.

She lifted a hand and touched her swollen bottom lip. "You've a tongue like a cat's," she said.

Jareth stood and paced a little away from her. When he came back to stand over her, his expression was unyielding. "If you want my help, I will help you, but there are some . . . conditions."

"What kind of conditions?" she asked warily. Whatever they were, she knew they would be entirely in his favor.

"I will take you to the Goblin City, but once there, you may not leave the Underground. Ever. Not for any reason."

Sarah's eyes widened. "Why?"

Jareth ignored that as if she had not spoken. "Because humans are not native to the Underground, they are considered property," he said. "Do you understand this, Sarah? You would be my property. Your every breath, your every word, your every deed, and your every desire would belong to me. If you feel pain, it is because I will it. If you love, it is only because I allow it. Everything you are would be mine to do with as I choose. Do you understand this?"

Sarah swallowed. She wanted to refuse, to tell him no, to banish him back to his dark underworld. She knew the words that would do it, and they were on the tip of her tongue, but she could not utter them. She hated him, and would have denied him if she had any other choice, but the choice was no longer hers to make. If she denied him again, she knew that he would leave her, and she would die there in the pool of her own blood and be forgotten. And more than she wanted to thwart him, she desperately wanted to live, even if it meant being enslaved. She despised Jareth for his cruelty and his power, but she wanted him too, in a deep instinctive way that had nothing to do with love and everything to do with lust. Jareth felt the same, she knew, she could see the need in his eyes every time he looked at her for too long. She had a very good idea what belonging to the Goblin King would involve, and the knowledge filled her with equal parts dread and desire.

"I can never come back?" she asked, hoping that the answer would be different, and knowing that it wouldn't be.

"Never."

She sighed. Her father was five years in his grave and her mother was a washed out actress living with her newest beaux in a trashy basement apartment on the lower east side. Her stepmother wanted nothing to do with her, and the feeling was more than mutual. She hated working at the school, trying to force knowledge into the shallow minds of children who did not want it, at the behest of a tired old man who had long ago stopped caring. She was sick of pouring her heart out on paper only to have it sent back to her dog-eared and scribbled on by strangers who couldn't, or wouldn't, understand it. She was tired of the world, really, and it would seem, the world was tired of her. Her only regret was Toby, who, despite the complete lack of affection between them, was still her brother. She still thought of him as the tiny baby in the red and white striped pajamas that she challenged a king to save. She would probably always think of him that way, and perhaps that was part of the problem. He wasn't that baby anymore, and she didn't have to save him. He didn't need to be saved, and if he had, she was the last person in the world he would have thought to turn to.

Perhaps that was best, really. She could go on remembering the baby in the pajamas the way he was ten years ago, when she doted on him, and resented him, and wished him away, and he could forget her like his mother wanted. No more phone calls—fifteen minutes, and only fifteen minutes—every Friday evening. No more prolonged silences when neither of them had anything to say to the other. He could be allowed to move on, and she would regret that he would have to move on without her, but she would be alive.

"Alright, Jareth," Sarah said at last. "What do I have to do?"

Midge giggled delightedly and scurried up Jareth's leg to perch on his shoulder, clutching the high collar of his cloak. He peered at Sarah keenly with his gimlet eyes. Jareth smiled and stroked the soft fur of the goblin's tail in a distracted way.

"Close your eyes, Sarah, and make a wish," he said.

Sarah hesitated. "Why do I have to close my eyes?"

Jareth made a frustrated sound in his throat. "Fine, keep them open if you like. It's just less . . . disorienting if you close them."

Sarah closed her eyes. "Now what?"

"Make a wish."

She opened one eye and regarded him thoughtfully. "Kind of a genie thing, huh?"

His lips twitched in amusement. "Something like that. Actually it's more of a Fae thing."

"Fae? You mean fairies?" she asked. "I don't believe in fairies."

She was looking at him like she half expected him to fall down dead at this declaration. He shrugged. "Whether or not you believe in fairies anymore is actually no concern of mine. Now make a wish, and say the words, or stay here and bleed to death, as you by rights should. Either way, I am rapidly losing my patience."

"Insufferable, arrogant, prig," Sarah muttered, then, rapidly, before she could lose her nerve or change her mind, "I wish the goblins would take me away—right now."

And in a swirl of sugar scented air and windblown music, she was gone.

Somewhere the clock started ticking again, counting down time in its tiny little increments. Somewhere a dog, caught mid-bark completed the sound, then tucked its ears back and its tail in and lay down, sensing in that deep sixth-sense way that animals have that something had happened, and that he had somehow missed it. In the store, Sam finally picked up the phone and called 911 to report the robbery, then hung up and looked around with wide, dazed eyes.

"Miss Williams?"


	3. 3

Jareth was very old, though he did not look it, and he had ruled the Labyrinth and the Goblin City for a long time. Not a long time as humans measure it, in days, weeks, months, and years, but a long time by immortal reckoning. He had no idea what the exact amount of time was, just that it was long, and that for most of it, he had been alone.

He had the goblins, but for the most part, they were more like pets than companions, and they made terrible confidants because they had no long term memory to speak of, and so were incorrigible gossips. If they didn't run and tell somebody right away, they immediately forgot about it.

In the ten years since Sarah bested the Labyrinth, no human older than two years had set foot within the walls of the Castle Beyond the Goblin City. Ordinarily, time seemed to move rapidly in the Underground, years and seasons passing into each other so that Jareth hardly even noticed them anymore. But since the day Sarah spoke those terrible, fateful words—_You have no power over me_—time in the Underground had crawled by on relentless, tedious fingers.

Was it any surprise then that when she called him, speaking his name softly, with the desire to see him at the fore of her mind, that he went to her like a dog to his mistress' heal?

He did not love her. He even hated her a little for her cruel, hateful, damnable beauty, and the inexplicable hold she had over him. But he wanted her still, even though the blush of innocence was gone from her forever, even though she had long ago given every passion that he had awakened in her to another man, even though she didn't believe in fairies anymore. He wanted her, and when the opportunity to have her presented itself, he gladly took it.

She was once again within his power, and no words and no spells could change that now. If she returned to the Aboveground, she would die, and he would not be able to save her.

She was trapped. He had won. It had taken ten years, but in the end, he had triumphed.

Jareth should have been positively jubilant, but he wasn't, not really. He had gained his hearts fondest desire . . . but he had not wanted to gain it this way.

_Checkmate, my dear. I win, you lose, that is all you need know, _he thought with grim satisfaction when she made her wish for goblin intervention for the second and last time.

He had won . . . but it felt way too much like cheating.


	4. 4

"Let go of me, Jareth. I'm fine."

Jareth was insistent that she go to bed, right now. Sarah was just as determined that she was not, by God, going anywhere near a bed in her weakened state with Jareth under the same roof. Just because the roof in question happened to contain more than a hundred rooms, not including towers, didn't make it safe. Jareth was not very good at making her feel safe, at least not from him, not when he was standing there glowering at her like he would dearly love to throttle her.

"I realize that you have an extremely low opinion of me, Sarah," Jareth said coolly. "But believe it or not, I'm not about to ravish you when you're hardly able to stand on you own feet by yourself."

"I wouldn't put it past you," Sarah said.

Jareth considered himself to be a patient man. Truly he did. "You can go to bed voluntarily, or I can put you there. It's up to you."

"I don't need to go to bed," Sarah said. "I'm not tired. I'm fine."

Jareth noted with some amusement that she was shaking violently and almost transparently pale as she spoke. "Be that as it may, you are not well—"

"I'm fine," Sarah snapped irritably. Why wouldn't he just leave her alone? "And even if I'm not, I'll live."

"You'll live," he agreed. "Still, you left half your blood in the Aboveground. You're going to be understandably queasy for a while."

As if to prove his point, she swayed and had to brace a hand against the nearest wall to keep upright. That was it; Jareth had had enough of her damn stubborn defiance. Despite her protests, he lifted her into his arms and took the nearby tower stairs three at a time. She was unconscious by the time he pushed the door open, and she did not wake up when he carefully removed her blood soaked clothes, cleaned her skin with a wave of his hand, and slipped a soft cotton chemise over her head.

She stirred a little in her sleep when he tucked a quilt around her, but didn't wake. Jareth stood there for a few minutes, watching the slow rise and fall of her breathing and the rapid flicker of her dreaming eyes, and then he tucked a stray lock of her long dark hair behind her ear and left the room.

When Sarah woke four hours later, Jareth was sitting in a plush wing chair across the room, so when she opened her eyes, he was the first thing she saw. She smiled at him before she could think not to.

The smile faltered a little at the thought that he had been sitting there all day, watching her sleep. It made her think of the dreams she had all the time . . . when she lived in the Aboveground. And thinking of the Aboveground made her remember that she would never see it again, and that made her eyes fill with tears.

Which, of course, made her feel stupid, which only made her cry harder.

Jareth watched her curiously with lifted brows. There was a great deal of misery and despair in the Underground, but not tears. Tears in the Underground were as rare and precious as diamonds. There were very few creatures in the Underground who still remembered what it felt like to cry, and even less who could still do it, so to see Sarah brushing tears from her cheeks as fast as they could fall, had the power to move him in a way that little else did.

Sarah looked up and swiped roughly at her face when he approached the bed. "I'm sorry," she said and turned her face away. "I know it's stupid, but I can't—"

"Shh." Jareth turned her face back to his and pressed a finger to her lips to silence her. "Please . . . don't be sorry. I envy you your ability to weep. Guard your tears closely, Sarah. This place has a way of . . . taking them away from you."

Sarah clutched the quilt closer to her chest and tried to move away from him, but she was already pressed against the headboard. "Don't be nice to me, Jareth, okay?" she said in a small voice. "I don't think I could stand it right now if you were nice to me."

He twined a tress of her chestnut hair around one finger, caressing the silky length of it with his thumb as he let it slip through his hand. "I have a gift for you, Sarah."

She gave a watery laugh at that. It was just so like him to tempt her from her thoughts with little baubles and magic tricks.

Jareth held his hand out to her, and Sarah watched as the air around it seemed to glitter and contract, then he was holding a slim, tapering crystal wand. It glowed softly, as though Jareth had trapped the moon inside it. "Do you want it?"

Sarah reached out and touched it. It was as smooth as it looked, but strangely warm to the touch. "What's the catch?"

"Catch?" Jareth repeated.

"Yeah. What do you want for it? What game are we playing now?"

Jareth smiled. "There is no catch, Sarah. No game."

She narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously, but she took the wand. She gave it an experimental wave and grinned delightedly when it made a swishing sound as is cut the air. "What does it do?"

"Anything you want it to do," Jareth said.

"Can I summon things with it?"

"Anything that exists or that you can imagine."

"Really? Are you sure you want to trust me with that kind of power?" He was crouched beside her next to the bed. Sarah pointed the wand at his throat and smiled humorlessly. "Could I kill something with it?"

Jareth understood the implied threat immediately, as she knew he would. "You think to use my own magic against me?" He laughed and stood up.

Sarah blinked. "What do you mean 'your own magic'?"

He gestured to the wand with a wave of his hand. "That wand answers to me. Knowing precisely how dear I am to your heart, did you really think that I would give you something that you could harm me with?"

"No," Sarah said. She felt foolish. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry that you thought to hurt me, or sorry that I anticipated it?" Jareth snapped. He didn't wait for an answer, but swept out of the room, slamming the door behind him.


	5. 5

Damn the girl anyway. What was wrong with her? He'd saved her life, handed her her dreams, given her everything, even himself, and still she would have killed him without hesitation, or a moment's regret. She had not been bluffing when she held the tip of that wand to his throat like a dagger; if she had seen a single flicker of fear or doubt on his face, she would have used it. He had seen it in the set of her jaw and the way her eyes darkened with deadly intent. Not only would she have used it, she had wanted to use it.

What did it say about him, that his initial reaction to that unforgiving predatory inclination of hers was not fear or anger, but lust?

Probably nothing, except perhaps that he had lived too long and outgrown any ability he had ever had to fear death.

And now he had given her power that was virtually equal to his own. Power to create . . . power to destroy. Yes, the wand could kill, it just couldn't kill him. It was his magic that gave it its power, just as it was his power that kept Sarah alive.

She couldn't die as long as he lived and she remained in the Underground. She couldn't die, but there were so many other things that could happen to her if she was left defenseless; worse things. There were creatures that inhabited the Underground who could be just as ruthless as she was, and they were a thousand times more adept at causing pain and suffering. What was more, they enjoyed it; for some of them it was the only thing they did enjoy.

So he gave her the wand and hoped for the best. Sarah was an intelligent and clever woman; she would figure it out. He just hoped she wouldn't bring down the Castle before she did.


	6. 6

The very first thing Sarah did with Jareth's new gift was turn one of the goblins into a throw pillow.

By accident, of course.

No matter what she did, she could not change the pillow back into a goblin. She secretly suspected this was because she thought the beast made a much better throw pillow than a goblin.

She eventually gave up and went to ask Jareth to do it for her. He grumbled to himself all the way back up the tower steps, then changed the goblin back with a wave before disappearing back down the stairs.

"Sorry," Sarah said to the goblin, who glared at her warily and quickly followed his king back to the main floor before she 'accidentally' turned him into a tea cozy or a dust mop.

"Okay then." Sarah looked around the dreary stone walls of the tower room, then at the crystal wand in her hand. A slow, wicked grin began to pull at her lips.

Not ten minutes later, Jareth was sitting in the throne room, one leg casually draped over an arm of the throne, reading a book, when one of his smaller goblins dashed by, screeching madly, closely followed by something white and hissing. He glanced up curiously to watch the two creatures disappear down the stairway that led to the dungeons, and then calmly went back to his book.

Sarah arrived moments later and stopped in front of him, panting heavily and trying to catch her breath to speak. "Where—?"

Without taking his eyes off his book, Jareth wordlessly pointed to the stairs.

"Thanks," she said, and went after them.

The dungeons were dank, and dark, and depressing, but then they were dungeons, what else had she expected? Flowers and rainbows? Not damn likely. Maybe a few clumps of lichen blinking their bulbous eyes at her as she passed, but certainly no flowers. Sarah didn't even know if they had rainbows in the Underground. She supposed they must, but if they did, they could not have been seen from that part of the Castle. There weren't any windows, not even windows with bars on them.

The only really positive thing she could say about the dungeons was that it didn't look like they had actually been used for centuries. She used the faint, moon-like glow of the wand to guide her and almost stepped on an ancient, crumbling skeleton, and that was the only thing she saw that suggested there had ever been life in this place. She noticed that there were manacles around the wrist bones that were connected to thick chains which were bolted to the wall. She shuddered and quickly moved on.

She found the goblin by following his high pitched gibbering cries. He was at the back of the last cell, crouched in the very darkest shadow he could find. Shire, Sarah's cat, had him cornered there.

It had seemed like a nice idea at the time, and she really did miss her pet, so she had used the wand to summon him to the Underground.

Things had started to go wrong the instant Shire appeared in her room, on her bed, with every one of his sleek white hairs at alarmed attention. He took one look around the strange room, taking in Sarah and the hideous little monsters lurking in every corner, and sat down to clean himself. In Sarah's experience, this indicated one of several things; he was bored, he was irritated, he was feeling very pleased with himself about something, or—and this one really seemed the most likely—his fur had been ruffled during the transition and he was simply putting it back in order.

However, while Shire seemed to take everything in stride, the goblins made the mistake of trying to 'make friends'. The cat, quite understandably, took exception to this and tried to rip their faces off. He may even have succeeded, if one unfortunate creature hadn't tread on his tail and invoked the cat's wrath. Shire, who had a very well developed sense of revenge, had set on the goblin with every intention of disemboweling it.

And that was how she ended up here, alone in the dark, creepy dungeons of the Castle Beyond the Goblin City, rescuing a goblin from the raging demon that was her cat.

Shire gave a low growl and the goblin yelped and tried to climb the slimy stone wall. The cat paced a little away and sat down, looking positively smug.

"You stop that," Sarah scolded. Shire regarded her balefully, then got up and made his way back to the stairs, his tail held high and proud.

The goblin whimpered, bringing Sarah's attention to it. "Come here," she coaxed, trying to keep her voice as light and harmless as she could. "Come on now, he's gone. He won't hurt you."

The goblin didn't look convinced. "Will," he said. His voice was surprisingly low and scratchy for such a small goblin. Midge was no bigger than this one and his voice was high and shrill, a few octaves lower than a whistling teakettle.

"If you come out of there, I promise I won't let him hurt you, okay?" She tried to use the bright, soothing voice she reserved for scared children and crazy people. The last thing she needed right now was a goblin to freak out and try to bite her. Just like rainbows, she didn't know if they had rabies in the Underground, but if they did, it was a safe bet this little beastie had it. "Come on, he's gone, I swear."

"Is not," the creature argued. "Mean," he confided to her, making a clawing gesture with one hand to demonstrate. "Bite me. Hurt."

Sarah sighed. There really was nothing for it; she would have to try to pick him up and carry him back to the main floor.

She crouched down and when the goblin didn't shrink away from her, she reached out and gathered him into her arms. "If you bite me," she warned, "I'll turn you into a mouse and feed you to him."

The goblin's yellow eyes widened fearfully and his blunt little claws clutched her arms tightly. "Won't," he promised.

"Good, let's get the hell out of here."

"Hell," the goblin agreed solemnly.


	7. 7

'Hell' was exactly the way Jareth would have described the situation if he had known the meaning of the word.

The goblins were entirely capable of causing mayhem of every imaginable sort, but it was mayhem that Jareth was used to dealing with. Just hex a few of the more aggressive goblins, issue a few orders and threats, and everything seemed to settle down—at least until they thought of something new to get into, then it started all over again.

But how, exactly, did one threaten a cat? It just looked at you patiently, like you were a child having a tantrum, then did whatever it wanted to do anyway.

And hexing it, no matter how enjoyable that would have been, was out of the question. It would have made Sarah angry if he hurt her pet simply because it was annoying him, and even though she couldn't kill him no matter how much she might wish to, he knew what an angry Sarah Williams could be like and he didn't want to have to live with her.

When Sarah reappeared in the throne room several minutes behind the savage little ball of white fur with a baby goblin on her hip, he glared at her, ran his fingers through his hair, and pointed at the cat, who serenely curled up in the middle of his throne, sleeping. "What is that?" he demanded through gritted teeth.

Sarah rolled her eyes. "That is a cat," she informed him, "which you know perfectly well. More specifically, it is my cat. And his name's Shire."

"Shire?"

"Short for Cheshire. You know, like the Cheshire Cat?"

Jareth had never read _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_, and had no idea what a 'Cheshire Cat' was or what it had to do with anything. "What is it doing here? There are no cats in the Underground. How did it get here?"

"There are now," Sarah said and held up the wand with a grin.

Jareth blinked once. "I gave you that, the tremendous power of you very dreams, and the only use you can think of for it is to bring your pet here?"

Actually, she had already thought of a hundred things she could use it for, and had every intention of trying them out, but she didn't tell the Goblin King that. He might have taken it away from her.

"Don't be silly," she scoffed. She crossed the room, used the wand to conjure a plush armchair, and plopped down into it with the goblin in her lap. "What would you have me use it for? World Peace?"

Jareth's lips twitched reluctantly. She had just called him 'silly'. He'd been called a lot of things by a great many people; silly wasn't one of them. "No, of course not."

"Well, then I don't see what the problem is." She absently stroked the grey and black spotted fur at the base of the goblin's skull. The creature made a little contented sound in the back of its throat and relaxed. "I've been wondering about something," Sarah said abruptly.

Jareth lifted a brow, folded his arms over his chest, and rested a hip against a table that suddenly materialized for the purpose.

"Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?" she ventured.

"That really depends on the question," Jareth said.

Seeing that it was safe for the moment, more of the goblins who had hidden themselves in the face of Shire's wrath were reappearing. One of them, envious of the attention Sarah was giving to the little one in her lap, and braver than the rest, edged up against her leg.

"You said that you were Fae," Sarah said.

Jareth had an idea where this was going and smiled.

"Well, if you're Fae . . . how did you get to be the Goblin King?"

Jareth thought about it—not his answer, just whether or not he wanted to tell her. "My mother was Seelie Sidhe. Do you know what that is?"

"Yes." The goblin beside her leg ran his fingers over the jean material of Sarah's pants leg and she nudged it away with her foot. She regarded the ugly little thing uneasily. The way it was looking at her, she half expected it to start humping her leg. "Yes, I know what it is."

"I thought you might."

"So your mother was Seelie Sidhe, but that doesn't explain how you became the Goblin King." When he didn't say anything, she asked, "What about your father?" She assumed they didn't have immaculate conception in the Underground, but then, what did she know?

He hesitated, then sighed. "My mother was in a . . . an undesirable arranged engagement. Rather than marry her betrothed, she sought asylum from the King of the Goblins. My father."

"Your father was a goblin?" She wanted to be absolutely sure that she understood him correctly.

"Yes, my father was a goblin," Jareth said.

Sarah looked down at the goblin by her feet. He was once again close against her leg, but had not yet dared to resume caressing her. He was not cute like the one currently resting his head on her breast; he looked like some bizarre and unfortunate cross between a Yorkshire terrier and a howler monkey. What would it take to make someone desperate enough to—no, better not think about that.

She returned her gaze to Jareth. "Ew," she said simply.

Jareth smiled grimly. "Yes, well, the Fae think rather the same thing. A fact that has made me vastly unpopular at Court."

Sarah thought that was pretty funny and couldn't help laughing a little at his expense.

"A fortnight from now there is to be a ball. Every monarch in the Underground is invited to attend," Jareth said when her laughter had subsided. "This year it is to be held at the Unseelie Court. You are going with me. We'll see how amusing you find the whole thing when you're in the thick of it—and believe me, you will be. You look like Seelie, did you know that? Everyone will want to know who you are, what you are to me . . . I daresay you'll be the very topic of courtly intrigue."

If he was hoping for some kind of stunned reaction, he was doomed to be disappointed. She hadn't endured three years of staff meetings and parent conferences to quail in the face of a little royal one-upmanship. Sarah just smiled sweetly and asked, "Do I have to wear a corset?"


	8. 8

Sarah was bored.

There were only so many things you could turn a goblin into before it just wasn't fun anymore.

Naturally, that wasn't the only thing she had been doing for the last couple of days. It was just something she liked to play around with between redecorating her rooms.

Honestly, the place was depressing enough that it took absolutely no stretch of the imagination whatsoever to have her claustrophobically convinced that she was in an ancient European prison. Something like the Tower of London , except not as pretty.

So as soon as she got away from the Goblin King she began renovating. She added a few more windows so that the light could come in, and to make the best of the magnificent view she had of the Labyrinth. Then, because she was in a tower, and just because she could, she turned the ceiling into a giant domed skylight. To keep the heat out when the sun was right at its peak, she also added curtains, but left them down.

The bed, she decided, had to go. It was a hideous thing that bore a disturbing resemblance to some kind of medieval torture device. Both head and footboards were decorated with demons and monsters, carved in intricate detail in high relief. Some of the creatures were so realistic that they seemed to be trying to fight their way free of the wood so that they could tear her to pieces.

Anyway, not something you wanted to wake up to—or go to sleep under, for that matter.

Instead of vanishing the thing completely, she put her imagination, and what limited artistic ability she possessed to use, and transformed it into something much nicer. She replaced the demons and monsters with owls perched in treetops and flying out to hunt little wooden mice in the wooden grass. She gave it high swirling posts over which she draped blue and green gossamer silk, then just because it amused her to do so, she added a crystal sphere to the top of each post.

Pleased with this success, she decided to do the same thing with her plain old heavy wood chamber door. She used the magic of the wand to coax cat faces from the wood. They were so lifelike that most of the goblins were afraid to go near her chambers after that, which had really been what she intended all along.

She conjured Persian rugs for her floor, comfy plush chairs, and an honest to Christ modern bathroom. She worried that the latter might have been a bit much. The Castle didn't seem to have indoor plumbing, or a septic system, but that didn't stop her from trying it to find out.

Miraculously, it did work.

The only problem Sarah could see with it was that the goblins, those brave few who got past the door, decided the toilette was a toy and thought it was very funny to give each other swirlies.

That done, she was desperate for something to do to occupy her mind—or, failing that, her attention.

With this in mind, she decided to go exploring. This was a Castle after all, and she was going to be here for a while—Jareth had at one point used the word 'forever'—so it would probably be a good idea to become better acquainted with her new home.

She hated the sound of that, even inside her own head, but she wouldn't lie to herself about it; like it or not, the Castle Beyond the Goblin City was now her home.

The first room she entered was very large and round, and had no windows at all. She could see by the faint light of her wand that there were small golden tables lining the wall, and at the centre of each there was a little crystal box.

"Curiouser and curiouser," she muttered to herself as she approached one of the tables and looked down at the box sitting on it. It certainly looked harmless, but then, she reminded herself wryly, things were not always what they seemed. She tapped the top of the box with the wand and jumped back when a deep crimson light flared inside it.

She really should have taken the light as a warning sign and left right then, but, her curiosity piqued, she reached out and lifted the lid. For a few moments, nothing extraordinary happened, then in a sudden flash of sparks a little glowing ball of red light shot out of the box and whirred around the room.

"Oh no!" Sarah grabbed for it and almost upset another table. "Shit! Oh shit! Jareth is going to kill me!"

The little sparkling object whizzed by her ear, then floated serenely up to the ceiling to bounce around.

"Come back here, you . . . you . . . whatever you are!"

She watched the thing bounce gleefully around just out of her reach for a few minutes, before inspiration struck her and she pointed the wand at it. "Come here, right now," she ordered it, and the sparking red ball immediately descended.

It came to rest less than half an inch above her palm. It gave off a throbbing heat that seemed to be in tune with the pulsing light at its center. It was that more than its erratic behavior that convinced her that it was alive.

"I'm sorry," she told it, unsure if it could even understand her, "but you're going to have to go back in your box, or you're going to get me into trouble."

The little orb flared brightly and shuddered. It was quite obvious to Sarah that it did understand her, and moreover, was none too keen to go back in its box. Like it or not, Sarah had the wand, and it could not stand in the face of such power. She lowered the glowing ball back into the box, and with a relieved sigh, clapped the lid back over it.

She quickly left the room and closed the door firmly behind her.

She recognized the next room she peeked into from her last visit to the Castle ten years previous and instantly slammed the door without going in. It was the Escher Room, and she had no desire to embarrass herself by getting stuck on the ceiling and having to scream for Jareth to come rescue her.

She remembered that she had seen Jareth reading a book earlier and went in search of a library.

As she was crossing the throne room to take another flight of stairs, she paused to regard the tarnished gold throne. She glanced around, and when she didn't see anyone watching, she pointed her wand at it. The throne melted, and in its place sat an acid green lawn chair.

Giggling to herself, Sarah hastily climbed the stairs. She would have dearly loved to see Jareth's face when he found it, but she didn't quite dare.

She didn't find a library in that wing of the Castle. She did find several other interesting things, a room full of thirteen hour clocks, paintings with eyes that followed her as she passed, and a door that would not open, no matter how much magic she threw at it. She suspected that the door probably led to Jareth's private chambers.

She finally gave up her search, at least for the moment, and went looking for Jareth.

He'd probably found his 'throne' by now.

The Goblin King was in a dining hall on the main floor, with his booted feet propped up on the table, pealing an orange.

He looked up as she entered and popped a section of orange into his mouth. "I see you've been exploring," he said.

Her eyes narrowed. "How the hell can you tell that just by looking at me?"

Jareth gestured to the right sleeve of her shirt. Sarah looked down and saw a trail of glittering red dust.

It must have gotten there when the glowing thing in the room of crystal boxes was bouncing around over her head like a crazy dervish.

"They're Will-o-Wisps," Jareth informed her. "Nasty, devious creatures if you let them have their way."

Sarah looked at him suspiciously. "How did you know—?"

"What you were thinking?" he shrugged. "I imagine because it's what just about anyone would be thinking if they had gotten as close to one of the dastardly things as you apparently have."

"Oh." Well, at least he couldn't read her mind. For a minute there, she'd been worried.

Sarah crossed the room and plopped gracelessly down into the chair directly across from him. "I'm bored," she announced.

"Really?" He placed another section of orange in his mouth, chewed it thoughtfully, and swallowed. "What do you expect me to do about it?"

"Where are my friends?"

He lifted a brow. "What friends?"

"Don't play coy with me, Jareth," she said. "Or at least, don't expect me to believe it. You know exactly who I'm talking about; Hoggle, Ludo, and Didymus."

"Ah, those friends."

Sarah rolled her eyes.

"Sir Didymus has left the Labyrinth for the foreseeable future. Something about valiant quests, or some such rubbish."

That sounded like something the fierce little fox would do, she thought, a little worriedly. He was very brave, but he had a suicidal streak as deep and wide as the Grand Canyon.

"And Ludo?"

Jareth shrugged. "I really have no idea where he is. He got tired of the goblins tormenting him and I haven't seen him . . . since just after you left." He ate the last sections of his orange and sat back with his arms folded. "Can't say that I blame him."

Sarah was becoming desperate. "Well then, what about Hoggle? He's here, isn't he? I mean, he's your subject, so—"

"He's here," Jareth confirmed, and she felt a moment's excitement at the idea of seeing her old friend. "Well, not here, exactly." He grinned when he saw her shoulders slump. "He's the Labyrinth's gatekeeper. He lives in a little cottage at the beginning. There aren't many people who know the words anymore, so it's been a long time since he's had to . . . distract anyone for me. Mostly, he spends his time harassing the fairies with insecticide. It keeps them from breeding like lice and infesting the shrubbery."

Sarah propped her elbows on the table and leaned toward him. "I want to see him."

Jareth gestured out the nearest window to the vast Labyrinth with a wave of his hand. "You better get started then. It'll be dark soon, and you really don't want to get caught in the maze overnight."

Sarah suggested several very creative and interesting things he could do with his fucking Labyrinth—most of them beyond the realm of physical possibility, even for one such as himself—then stormed out of the hall, cursing him under her breath with every step.


	9. 9

Back in the Aboveground, speculation about the disappearance of Miss Sarah Ann Williams, the pretty high school English teacher, was positively rampant. When coverage in more serious newspapers died down, the ridiculous tabloids began to speculate about what had 'really' happened. Everything from abduction by aliens to spontaneous combustion was suggested; one story in an issue of World News actually ousted the aliens, the Bat Boy, and Nostradamus.

For weeks after it happened, the little Quick Mart grocery where she had vanished from had more business than it knew what to do with. Thomas, the manager, had to take on six new full time employees just to keep up. Not that he was complaining, mind you, oh no. He knew a good opportunity when he saw one and didn't hesitate for a second to take full advantage of the situation. As soon as the cops had everything cleared away he started designing flyers, which were handed out to every curiosity seeker brave or stupid enough to cross the threshold. And gawkers did come, from all over. What they hoped to find when they got there was anyone's guess, but one of them rarely left without first buying something. If things kept up this well, he might start making t-shirts, and then . . . who knows? One thing Thomas was sure of though; Miss Williams getting herself shot in his store was the best thing that ever happened for his business.

The cops investigated it like it was a murder case, which technically, it was, even if they did only have one body and a pool of blood instead of two bodies and a pool of blood. And because there was so much blood—much more than any normal human being could have lost and still walked away, assured several forensic experts—and because there was also the dead body of one Mr. Nathaniel Jones, shot once through the head, laying in a puddle of stale beer and broken glass, as well as an eyewitness that claimed to have seen everything, they had no problem making the charge stick. In fact, when they caught up with Len and Alan, the two armed robbers, Len did perhaps the smartest thing he had ever done in his life and agreed to testify against his good buddy Alan, and in return, the DA agreed to waive the death penalty. For Len, of course, not for Alan.

Sarah's family was devastated by her loss, though admittedly, her mother was a little more devastated than either her stepmother or Toby.

Sarah's stepmother said it was a real shame, though secretly, she thought Sarah had gotten exactly what she had coming to her. What with all the running around with strange people she'd done back in high school and college—people with tattoos and piercings in unnatural places, who read Nietzsche and listened to Van Halen and quoted Jim Morrison—what else could anyone have expected for her but a bad end and a short life?

Toby had cried when his mother told him that his sister was dead, the way young children do when they don't really understand what it means, then went out to play with his friends at the arcade, and soon forgot all about it. Later, when he was older, he would say, "Yes, that was my sister," when he was asked by the curious and well meaning, but he barely remembered her by then. And he never knew that she had once saved him from the Underground. He wouldn't have believed it even if he did; you see, Toby didn't believe in fairies either, but the difference between him and Sarah was that Sarah remembered what it had felt like to believe.

Sarah's mother mourned Sarah's loss for the rest of her life. After the trial and conviction of Leonard Baker and Alan Sanderson, she had her daughter declared legally dead. She had a headstone made and erected in the cemetery beside Sarah's father. Not a cheap headstone either; it was one of those fancy alabaster stones with cherubim and doves carved into it. She went to the cemetery every day to cry against the injustice of a world that could take such a sweet, pure, innocent person from her family. She always left a single red rose on the ground, where Sarah would have rested, had she in fact been dead.

She was the 'grieving mother', and it was the best part she had ever played, on or off the stage, and she knew it. Her most secret fear was that one day her daughter would show up, completely unharmed and undeniably alive, and wonder just what the hell all the fuss was about.

She spent thousands of dollars and uncounted hours discussing this with her therapist.

At the high school where Sarah had once worked, her tragic disappearance provided her colleagues with a new topic to gossip about, which they did at great length.

The principal, Mr. Humphries, interrupted class a little before noon the day after I happened to call for a moment of silence. For the most part, the students spent this 'moment of silence' passing notes and trying not to giggle.

Samuel Windham's connection with the incident brought him popularity among the student body almost overnight. People he didn't know and had never spoken to were stopping him in the halls to chat. He was invited to all of the best parties. And even though he was a relatively bright boy for his age, and handsome in a very ordinary way, it would have amused Sarah to no end if she had known that she was more than a little bit responsible for Sam losing his virginity that year.

The only person who was not overwhelmingly surprised at the news of Sarah's disappearance was Laura, her editor. Sarah had always had an otherworldliness about her, as though she didn't have to wonder about Heaven, or Hell, or Shangri-La, because she'd been there already and had not been impressed by the view.

When Sarah's mother had had her declared dead, they had a little memorial for her and Laura had been invited. Actually, there was nothing little about it, but that had been what the invitation said. Laura had not attended. She was probably one of the few people in the big apple state that did not attend, but she had not wanted to go to something that she considered to be a farce.

It pleased her to think of Sarah somewhere else, alive and happy, living out her days in a place where she finally belonged, not cold, and dead, and rotting somewhere in a place that she had never honestly fit in.

Two days after Sarah's 'death', Laura received an envelope in the mail, forwarded to her office under Sarah's name. When she slit the manila envelope open with a quick jerk of her letter opener to find an acceptance letter for _The Labyrinth_, she sat down and laughed until tears ran down her face.


	10. 10

Sarah had thought that pestering Jareth would afford her some amusement to break the tedium that life in the Castle Beyond the Goblin City was proving to be. What she had not counted on was the Goblin King's complete lack of reaction. He didn't even twitch—well, not in a very interesting way anyhow—when he found the lawn chair that she had transformed his throne into. He merely halted in the entranceway, gave Sarah a longsuffering look, then changed it back with an elegant wave of one long fingered hand.

So far, she had turned the staircases into escalators, moved the dining hall to the second floor, blasted Midge out a tower window, and stuck all the furniture to the ceiling—she'd gotten that last idea from something she remembered reading, about some rock star or other, back in college—but it amounted to nothing. Jareth just fixed everything when she wasn't looking and never said anything about it. She would have preferred it if he had shouted at her. The resigned looks he gave her were making her feel like a naughty, misbehaving child. It was a feeling she didn't much like.

She did eventually find the library, down a hallway on the third floor. She spent nearly an hour in the hallway, fascinated by the words that materialized in the stones, as though written by a mighty, unseen hand, before she realized that there was even a door at the end.

_She looks up and sees a door at the end of the hallway,_ read the words that suddenly appeared on the wall beside her face. _"I wonder what that is" she thinks to herself._

"Oh stop it," Sarah snapped, glaring at the wall.

_She expresses hostile feelings for the innocent stone wall that is just doing what it was made to do._

Sarah growled a soft curse under her breath and put her hand on the doorknob, ready to open it. She happened to look up and see, _She says a very foul expletive under her breath that she thinks the wall cannot hear. She forgets that walls do not have ears._

"I swear to God, everything in this place is just one more reason to hate you, Jareth," she grumbled.

She did not wait to see what the wall had to say to that. She opened the door and found the library.

'Library' was actually a very mild word for what she found, but she couldn't think of any others to describe the place. It was huge, lined wall to wall with books, scrolls, pamphlets, and manuscripts of every variety and age imaginable.

There were books bound in leather, canvas, silk, and even one that she strongly suspected was bound in human skin. There were scrolls in gold, silver, and leather tubes along one wall. There were manuscripts in boxes, bound with velvet chords, silk strings, and twine.

She touched one such manuscript, left carelessly out on a table, and it instantly crumbled to dust under her fingers.

"Wow," Sarah said softly. There simply was no other word for it, and 'wow' seemed to sum things up nicely.

She plucked a slim red-bound book from the nearest shelf and sat down to read.

Two hours later, when Shire came in to twine around her feet for attention, she had finished it and started another. This one was far more entertaining than the first—a book of poetry entirely devoted to the beauty of trees in summer—and she was laughing at the exploits of Sir William Fig and his triumphant defeat of the Mad Mookybun, when the cat jumped up in her lap. She absently stroked Shire's pale fur and put the book down with a final giggle.

She supposed she wouldn't have found the exploits of unknown heroes and heroines quite so entertaining if she had grown up in the Underground. She was sure the daring adventures of Sir William Fig would have been much more impressive if she had actually known what a Mookybun was. It sounded like a very large, gooey cinnamon pastry to Sarah, which provided her with many very amusing mental images as she read about Sir Fig 'charging it down, heedless of any danger to his own person, his only thought to save the village from its villainy'.

She took Shire and left the library, covering her mouth every now and then with another fit of giggles at the mental picture of knights jousting giant cinnamon rolls for the safety of the kingdom. She didn't even glare when the wall commented that she was _behaving hysterically_.

Just as she had every night, she had the evening meal in the dining hall with Jareth. They usually spent it eating in silence, and tonight was no exception.

So she was a little surprised when Jareth put down his fork and sat back to look at her, a stern expression marring his pretty face. When he didn't say anything, just stared at her with those weird eyes of his, she did the same and returned his look with a steady one of her own.

"The ball is in two days," he said, at last breaking the silence.

Sarah did some quick calculating and decided that sounded about right. She'd been there almost two weeks now, and unless time ran much different in the Underground than the Aboveground, two days would make it a fortnight.

"So?" she lifted a brow.

"Do you know what you're going to wear?"

She couldn't have heard him right. "What?"

Jareth sighed and steepled his fingers on the table in front of him. "You have never been to a ball at Court . . ."

Sarah thought that was grounds for debate, and opened her mouth to do just that, when Jareth interrupted her.

"That was not the same thing. What I meant was, you have never been to a gathering of the Fae."

Sarah shrugged. "Okay. So?"

"I may have mentioned that I am not well liked at Court."

"You may have mentioned that," Sarah said wryly.

"Well, it's perfectly true," he said. "And not only because of my parentage."

"Isn't that enough? They need another reason?"

Jareth looked harassed and swiped a hand through his hair, making it stand up in spikes. It was really very cute, almost endearing even, to see him so frazzled about her wardrobe.

"You're not going to make this easy for me, are you?" he asked.

"Of course not."

"Fine. I am not well liked at court, and usually I am fine with that. They do not dare do anything about it because, though I am what they call a 'half-breed', I have the more power. It is the same reason why they send me an invitation to every event, even though they fully expect me not to attend."

"I really hope this is going somewhere," Sarah said.

He smiled grimly. "Indulge me a moment further."

She shrugged.

"They have every reason not to expect me to attend, because for the last thousand years or so, I have not. Among other, more personal reasons, I really saw no need to force my company upon them, or force myself to endure theirs."

"You said there was a point to this."

"Yes," he said. "The point is this; if I am going to break with tradition and go to this cursed thing, then we are going to do it right. I want you to be resplendent, so that no one would dare look down their nose at either of us for being there. They may think that we do not belong there, they may even whisper it behind their fans, but they will not dare say it to our faces, with their eyes or with their mouths."

Sarah rolled her eyes. She didn't know which she found more ridiculous; that Jareth had actually used the word 'resplendent' in a sentence, or that he wanted to involve her in his little pissing contest.

"I don't know what you're so upset about," she said. "It's not as if it was my idea to go to this 'cursed thing' in the first damned place."

"I know that," Jareth said.

"Okay, fine," she said. "I have no idea what is usually worn at these . . . gatherings, so why don't I just leave the whole thing to you."

Jareth blinked. "Me?"

"You're much more qualified than I am," she assured him, gesturing to her plain cotton t-shirt and blue jeans. "Besides, what do I know about Underground fashion?" Except that it seems like an oxymoron, she thought with a critical glance at Jareth's tight-fitting trousers and puffy poets shirt.

Jareth seemed to think about it, then nodded. "You're absolutely right," he said after a while. "After all, you don't really know what to expect, do you?"

"No, I don't."

"Alright then. I shall undertake it."

"You do that." Sarah got up from the table. "I'll go to bed then and leave you to it."

Jareth nodded absentmindedly and waved her off. He seemed to be already thinking about his little project; how much lace to put around the collar, how many diamonds to set into the hemline, and if that might be a bit much.

Sarah shook her head and grinned. Really, it was very cute.

But if he tried to make her wear anything with starch and stays, she was putting her foot down. A girl could only expect to be so tolerant, and cuteness only went so far.

The day before the ball was to take place, Jareth unveiled the results of his little project to Sarah.

Knowing Jareth and his love for feathers and shine, she had half expected something that looked like it had been stolen off of a Vegas show girl. It was actually much nicer than Sarah had thought it would be.

Jareth had found her in her rooms, laying on the bed with a book. He'd merely lifted one lovely pale eyebrow at what she had done, specifically at the owl theme of the bed, and at the skylight, windows, and many garish throw-pillows in general, then cleared his throat to get her attention.

Sarah looked up from her book. "Yes?"

"I have something to show you," he said. He eyed a yellow spotted pillow on the floor warily. It had trembled.

"What is it?"

"Ah, it's a surprise," he said hesitantly.

Sarah was intrigued, more by the Goblin King's cautious behavior than by the idea of a 'surprise'. It wasn't like Jareth to hesitate about anything, and he was forever giving her presents. Champaign diamond earrings, books, even wild flowers. They were always left anonymously in her room, but she didn't need a note to know who they were from. But Jareth was never anything but confident, and to see him uncertain about something made her curious to see whatever it was that could make him so.

She got up and followed him down the stairs to the throne room. In the entranceway, he stopped her.

"Close your eyes."

Sarah narrowed her eyes on him suspiciously. "What if I don't?"

Jareth gritted his teeth. "Must everything be a war with you? Can you not do this one small thing without fighting me?"

"I'm sorry," she said and promptly closed her eyes.

She tensed when he touched her, but he was just putting his hands on her shoulders to guide her into the room.

"You can open them now."

She opened her eyes and stared. It was black silk, so dark that it seemed to absorb the light, and for a moment, before her eyes adjusted themselves to the image, it looked like it had been dipped in silver.

"Are those—?"

"Diamonds?" he finished for her. "No, actually, they're moonstones."

"Oh."

She didn't want to be impressed, but she was. There were moonstones set into the skirt from the hem to the waistline. The bodice was tight-fitting and laced up the back, and would almost certainly require a corset, but Sarah found that she didn't care.

"It's beautiful, Jareth," she said, and heard him sigh with relief. "Did you think I wouldn't like it?"

"I feared so, yes," he said, with a little self-deprecating smile.

"I honestly expected something more . . . Cher," she said.

"Cher?"

"She's a singer," Sarah said absently. "And I would still have worn that."

"I'm very glad that you like it," he said. He let his hands slide down her shoulders to her arms.

Sarah shivered and pulled away, glaring at him. "I don't like it _that_ much."

Jareth grinned and shrugged. "It was worth a try."

She gave a very unladylike snort. "Thank you—for the dress, I mean."

He gave her a little half bow, then turned on his heal and was gone.

Sarah took the gown to her room and laid it out on a chair. She fingered the silk—it was like water, it was so light—and admired the stones set into the skirt—moonstones, they glittered like little broken pieces of rainbow. It had the elegance of the standard black dress without being the least bit plain.

Jareth had taste. Who would have thought?


	11. 11

With the help of some of the more industrious goblins, Sarah managed to get into the gown on the morning of the ball.

She suspected that they had been a little more enthusiastic than strictly necessary when lacing the corset, but with her own proclivity for transfiguring them into inanimate objects whenever the urge struck her, she couldn't really hold it against them.

When she was ready, Sarah turned to the mirror at the foot of her bed to see the results, and caught her breath. The woman staring back at her was regal, as Jareth had said, 'resplendent'. The black silk of the bodice clung to her figure like it had been painted on, and the skirt swirled like a sky full of stars. She'd had some of the goblins braid her hair, and, ill feelings aside, they had done a splendid job; her dark hair was braided into hundreds of tiny little plaits, and wrapped up in an elaborate coiffure with black silk ribbons and strings of opals that dangled like teardrops. Perched upon the bridge of her nose was a small mask of glittering black gossamer, fashioned entirely out of interlapping scales of the thinnest fabric Sarah had ever seen.

There was only one problem: where was she supposed to carry the wand?

Not that she didn't have a newfound appreciation for the value of a good corset, but it made hiding things down your front a little inconvenient. Well, if nothing presented itself, she would just have to carry it, she decided.

"Jareth, I seem to be having a little—" Sarah came to an abrupt stop on the landing and gaped. Most of the throne room was taken up with what looked a lot like a giant bubble. Jareth was regarding the thing thoughtfully, and as she watched, he gestured at it, and it seemed to inflate a little larger. "—problem. What the hell is that?"

Jareth turned around and went very still at the sight of her. She was beautiful—well, he often thought of her as beautiful, but he had never seen her in a gown before, or with her hair up in that fascinating manner. It made her look refined and mature in a way that jeans and a t-shirt failed to.

"You look lovely," he said.

His black clothing and silver brocade doublet were a perfect match for her own outfit. His mask was a simple silver thing, tied in place so that the chords were concealed beneath his silver-blond hair.

"Thanks. The same to you," Sarah said absently. "Jareth, what are you doing?"

He looked puzzled for a moment, then followed her gaze to the bubble. "Arranging transport."

"Oh," she supposed that made sense—as much as anything concerning the Goblin King made sense. "Could you maybe help me with something?"

He lifted a brow and watched her approach him with the wand in her hand. "What?" he asked warily.

"Well, I guess I could just carry it, or leave it here, but I really thought—"

"Absolutely not."

"Excuse me?"

"You are never to let that out of your sight. It would be, well, it would be a bad idea." He tapped his top lip with a finger and thought about it. "It would also be inconvenient for you to be seen with it," he mumbled. "Might give them the wrong idea, as it were."

"Or the right one," Sarah said under her breath.

He smiled. "Or the right one," he agreed.

"Wonderful, what are we going to do about it?"

Jareth plucked the wand from her fingers. "This," he said. He closed his palms together over the wand, twisted once, and held up a small wand-shaped pendant.

"Wow," Sarah said.

"Indeed." he grinned and moved behind her to fasten the clasp around her neck. "There. Perfect. Hidden in plain sight, and as long as there is contact with your skin, you still have access to its powers."

"Does this mean I can do that waving thing you do?" She gave a demonstrative wave and sent a wood chair crashing into a wall. "Wow," she said again, and in her excitement, threw her arms around Jareth.

He predictably took full advantage of their positions and closed his mouth over hers in a kiss. It began light and careful, but when Sarah didn't resist, he deepened it. He coaxed her mouth open with a nip of his teeth, then slid his tongue over hers. He tasted sweet, like honey and magic, and his tongue was rough, like a cat's, sparking sensations down her nerves like pleasure tripping down a wire. Sarah felt her blood heat as his hands came up to cup the backs of her shoulders and hold her against him, and it took a supreme effort to make herself pull away.

"Jesus," she whispered, holding the back of a hand to her mouth and staring at him in shock.

Jareth was smiling, damn him, but when he took a step toward her, his intent boldly gleaming in his eyes, she held up a hand. "Don't."

Jareth halted and regarded her with mild confusion. "Why not? It's the most natural thing in the world, Sarah, for—"

"No," she snapped, then forced her voice to lighten a little. "We are not doing this. Not now."

He lifted a brow. "Bad timing?"

She laughed dryly. "The worst. But that's only part of it. I'm not doing this, not with you."

"Why not?" His face had lost all expression.

"Because you only want me because I defy you. No one else does. No one would dare. But I do."

Jareth didn't try to deny that was part of the appeal. But it wasn't all of it; it never had been. However, he didn't tell her that because he could see she'd already made up her mind about the whole thing, and unless he was willing to push her more than she was willing to give right now, it was best to just let it drop. For now.

"We, then we should be going," he said, turning his back on her and moving back toward the bubble. "We are already going to be unfashionably tardy as it is."

"We're getting there in that?" Sarah looked at the fragile silver bubble doubtfully.

"Yes," Jareth said. "Under other circumstances I would just take my bird form and fly there, but of course, you can't do that, and we really should arrive at the same time."

"Why couldn't I just transform myself into a crow or something with this?" she asked, gesturing to the pendant.

Jareth smiled patiently. "No reason, except that transfiguring yourself is much more advanced magic say, than turning goblins into chamber pots. It requires both a complete understanding of your physical self, as well as the creature or object you wish to transform into."

"Oh." Sarah was a little disappointed that she wouldn't be able to fly around the Castle any time soon.

"Don't look so crestfallen," Jareth said with a light chuckle. "Most Fae these days cannot even turn water into tea, so you're leagues ahead of them, even if you never so much as change your hair color."

Sarah shrugged. It didn't really matter, but it would have made getting over the Labyrinth a lot easier, and she still had hopes of seeing Hoggle again.

"So, exactly how are we getting there in this?" she asked. Why wasn't a simple horse-drawn carriage, or a limo good enough for the Goblin King? He had to make everything into an exhibition.

"It's very simple," Jareth said, and to demonstrate, he stepped through the wall of the bubble and grinned out at her from inside. "Come on."

He held a hand out to her through the bubble and Sarah took it and stepped forward.

He was right, it was simple. One minute she was standing in the throne room, the next, without the slightest displacement of air, she was standing beside him inside the bubble. From outside it had looked like just a bubble, one like little children liked to make by mixing their mother's dish soap with water, but inside it was a small circular room that made Sarah think uneasily of a sultan's harem. There were chase lounges piled with colorful pillows, fabulous Turkish carpets along the floor, and small blue lights, like fireflies, hovering in the air, casting the entire thing in an eerie intimate glow.

She gave Jareth a distrustful look and plopped down on one of the lounges with a heavy sigh. When Jareth moved to sit beside her, she glared at him. He shrugged indifferently and went to sit across from her amid a pile of pillows.

Sarah looked around at the gleaming silver walls, but she couldn't see out of the room. "So when do we start moving?" she asked.

Jareth smiled. "We are moving right now."

"Oh." They were both quiet for a few minutes, then unable to stand the silence, Sarah asked, "How long until we get there?"

"Not long."

She sighed and would have raked a frustrated hand through her hair if she hadn't remembered in time that it would mess up her coiffure. "Talk to me, Jareth, please. I can't stand this . . ."

"What would you have me talk about?" he asked in a frustratingly mild voice. Before she could think of anything to say to that, Jareth said, "We've arrived," and stood to help her out of the bubble.

"That was fast," Sarah said.

"Was it?" he asked. "I suppose it was. You'll find that time and space in the Underground is rather relative."

"Relative to what?"

"To each other."

Whatever the hell that was supposed to mean, Sarah thought. Then she looked up at the large gates before her and all thoughts of time and space and their relation to one another vanished from her mind.

The palace had been carved into the side of a great mountain, with towers and spires stabbing the sky like viscously sharp swords. The ramparts and parapets were magnificent, if entirely unnecessary due to the location. The palace looked impenetrable. It was beautiful, in a fierce, barbaric sort of way, and very intimidating.

"Jareth, I—"

She was brought up short by the appearance of a dark colored falcon, that swooped down, and in a flash of glitter, became a man.

"King Raspiel," Jareth greeted the newcomer. He swept the man a bow, with his eyes never leaving the man's face. It was the way one might bow before someone they thought might take their head if they were careless.

"Jareth," Raspiel said, his mouth twisting into a slight sneer. "We were not expecting you. And who is this lovely creature at your side? A new conquest, mayhap?"

He turned his eyes on Sarah and she noticed, with mild curiosity, that they were a pale, and completely unnatural, shade of lavender. He was really very handsome; tall, with dark chestnut hair and skin the swarthy color of varnished pine. He was also very much aware of it.

Sarah took one look at him and decided on the spot that she didn't like him.

"This is my companion, Sarah," Jareth told him by way of introduction.

"Sarah. Sarah," he rolled the word on his tongue as though tasting it. "What a bizarre name."

This from someone with the unfortunate title of 'Raspiel'? Sarah smiled at him politely. She wished he would stop looking at her like he was going to pounce on her and start chewing her neck at any moment. It was very disturbing.

"Well, where are my manners?" he said, abruptly shifting his attention back to Jareth. "The dance has already begun, and my lady will want to meet you. It's been such a long time since you've graced us with your presence, Jareth, I'm afraid she's never had the pleasure."

Jareth nodded and took Sarah's hand as Raspiel led them to the gates and, with a weave, opened them.

"I'm sure there are others who will be glad at a chance to renew old friendships," Raspiel continued as he led them down a corridor and up a twisting flight of stairs. "You will be staying for the banquet, won't you?"

"Yes," Jareth said. He took Sarah's hand as they made their way up the last few steps and entered the bright ball room. "We will be staying for the banquet,"

"Splendid," Raspiel said, his uncanny eyes lingering on Sarah, before darting back to Jareth. "That's just splendid."


	12. 12

Jareth leaned against a pillar along one wall of the dance hall and watched Sarah dancing with a young Fae in a silver demon mask and brocade waistcoat. To him, it looked more like the youth was dancing, and Sarah was just holding on as he twirled her from place to place, trying not to let go or trip over her own feet.

He smiled a little to himself and crossed his arms in front of his chest.

"Is she Seelie then?" asked a much older Fae seated on a stool beside him. "She looks it."

"She does, doesn't she?" Jareth agreed, rather than outright lie to the man and say that Sarah was Seelie.

"Been a long time since I seen a Seelie lass," the old man continued. "'Specially in Raspiel's court. Now the place is full of them, what with this masquerade ball, you know. Wouldn't think he'd stand for it, after what happened with the last one."

Jareth merely grunted and said nothing. He knew the last Seelie to set foot in Raspiel's hall had been his own mother, who had insulted and humiliated the Unseelie High King by laying with a goblin rather than wed him.

Jareth had no illusions that Raspiel would have forgotten about it by now. One of the many curses of having such long lives as the Fae did was that they also had long memories.

Raspiel would not have forgotten the slight Jareth's now dead mother had dealt him many thousands of years ago. Nor would he have forgiven it, though the object of his humiliation had long ago passed beyond the realm of dreams, and thus beyond his reach. Jareth knew the King still remembered, he saw it every time he looked into those purple eyes, the way Raspiel waited, biding his time, to take his revenge against the mother on the child.

He probably should have been afraid of Raspiel's anger—after all, of all the Fae still living in the Underground, Raspiel was the only one with power that came close to matching his own—but Jareth was not afraid of him. Not even within the walls of the High King's own palace, where most of his magic resided, surrounded on all sides by Seelie and Unseelie alike, who would not have hesitated to take his head if Raspiel had so commanded it.

He did not count the risk to himself, but Sarah was another matter entirely.

She was human, and in a world where humans were regarded as chattel, she was vulnerable. Jareth did not like to think what Raspiel, or many of the others, would do if they were to learn that she was not Seelie Sidhe at all, but a mortal woman. Jareth would try to prevent any harm from coming to her, but even with his superior magic, there were too many of them who would stand against him, and in the end, sheer numbers would win out.

And if they learned that she was not just some human slave of his, that she mattered to him more than a little . . . they would use her against him.

Quite a lot of the responsibility rested on Sarah's own shoulders, to make them believe that she was Fae, whether Seelie or Unseelie, it didn't matter. He knew that, though Sarah might have looked Seelie, with her ivory complexion, dark hair, and changeable eyes, her temperament was much more suited to that of Unseelie.

That was one of the most significant reasons why he had given her the wand, and charged her to keep it with her always. As long as she had magic at her command, it would be hard to doubt that she was some kind of Fae. Fae could sense magic, as they could not sense mortality, and if that magic was more powerful than their own, they tended to shy away from it—or draw to it, depending on their intentions.

Either way, as long as Sarah managed to keep her mouth shut about the Aboveground, she would be safe.


	13. 13

Sarah had just finished dancing a waltz with a very enthusiastic young man when she felt someone come up behind her and put his hands on her hips. She froze, then relaxed when she heard Jareth's voice in her ear.

"You seem to be enjoying yourself," he murmured just under her ear.

His breath tickled the back of her neck and she shivered. "I think they're very nice people," she said softly. "I especially liked your friend's wife, Elipsabet. She seems kind."

"Things are not always what they seem," Jareth said, pressing his mouth lightly to the curve of her shoulder. If cats had possessed the power of speech, Sarah was sure they would have sounded just like Jareth.

Sarah caught her breath and turned in his arms as the music started again, soft and low, a dance for lovers. "If you're going to stand here, we might as well dance," she said with a smile. "Otherwise, it looks like we're just making out on the dance floor."

Jareth had never heard the phrase, 'making out' but he quickly got the meaning from the way she said it and the laughing look in her eyes. Personally, he'd much rather be 'making out' than dancing, but that would have to wait for another time.

"Would it interest you to know that Queen Elipsabet was once worshiped in the Aboveground as a goddess of youth and purity?" Jareth asked her, keeping his voice low so that it wouldn't travel.

"Really?" Sarah said. "When?"

"About four thousand years ago," he said, turning with her in his arms so that her glittering skirts flared around his legs. "Her priestesses sacrificed infants in her name so that she would prolong their lives and their beauty."

Sarah halted mid-step and stared at him, open-mouthed. "That's horrible."

"Yes, it is," Jareth agreed. "And you would do well to remember it before you let any of them know what you are."

"You haven't told them that I'm human?"

Jareth lowered his head closer to hers as they swayed with the music. "No, and unless you want to find yourself passed around the dining hall to be 'tasted', I suggest you don't either."

Sarah stared at him in abject horror at the thought of such a thing being done to her. "But . . . but you wouldn't let them—"

"I wouldn't want to, no," he said. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm not really the sharing sort."

"I had noticed," she said in a small voice, comforted a little by that.

"But if you let it slip, I'm not sure how much I could do to stop it."

Sarah put a hand on his shoulder and made him pause dancing. "Jareth, I think . . . I want to go home."

Jareth narrowed his eyes on her face as he twined a loose lock of her hair around one finger. "You know that is impossible, Sarah. We had an arrangement, and even if we did not, you are dead up there. If you go back, you will be dead down here as well."

Sarah was confused for a moment before she understood exactly what he was talking about. When she did, she pressed her face into his shoulder and laughed at how completely he'd misunderstood her.

"Jareth," she said at length.

"Yes, Sarah?"

"I meant the Castle Beyond the Goblin City, not the Aboveground."

Jareth said nothing for a long while, and they began to dance again. The music consisted mostly of flutes, lyres, and bells, but it was actually quite lovely, and calming in and ghostly, dance-naked-by-moonlight sort of way.

"We can't go back early," Jareth said at last.

"For Christ sake, why not?"

"Hush," Jareth hissed. "Not so loud."

"Well, why can't we just leave, then?" Sarah demanded in a rough whisper. "I don't want to sit down to supper with a bunch of bloodthirsty would-be gods. Especially not if I'm in danger of ending up on the menu."

Jareth considered pointing out that what he had said about her being 'tasted' did not have anything at all to do with food, and everything to do with her finding herself on her back with her skirts up, but thought better of it. He could see by the way her eyes looked starkly green, rather than their normal in-between color, that she was spooked. If he said more, he was afraid he might be taking her back to the Castle in hysterics. He'd have the very devil of a time explaining that to their hosts.

"We can't leave just yet because I made the abysmal mistake of accepting King Raspiel's invitation to the banquet, and it would look suspicious if we were to not attend."

"But won't they sense something . . . that I'm not Fae?" Sarah asked nervously.

"Sense? Don't be absurd. They're Fae, not bloodhounds."

Sarah couldn't help grinning at the mental image that evoked. "I suppose you're right, then. We should stay for the banquet, but how long do we have to stay simply for courtesy's sake?"

Jareth danced her toward the edge of the dance floor. "We could probably make our excuses and leave around the eighth course without prompting undue suspicion."

"The eighth—how many courses are there?"

"That usually depends on the occasion, but for this—probably twelve. Thirteen if the cook was in a particularly cheerful mood."

Sarah looked him over once, taking in his slim, lithe body, and smiled. "How come you're not fat?"

Jareth returned her teasing look with one of his own and slung his arm around her waist. "You wouldn't like me if I was fat."

Sarah snorted.

For the moment, she had forgotten that she was afraid of the Fae, and more importantly, she had forgotten that she was afraid of the Goblin King himself.


	14. 14

Ten minutes into the first course, roast quail in almond sauce, and Sarah had a pretty good idea of why Jareth was not fat. The answer was simple; he didn't eat—or at least, he didn't eat anything that was prepared by, or passed to him from a stranger's hand. He contented himself with thick slices of coarse bread spread with a liberal amount of butter, a few tart little crabapples, an orange, and a handful of sugared pecans.

"Are you afraid it's poisoned or something?" Sarah asked. She leaned her head close to his ear to whisper it and hoped that any onlookers would think they were flirting.

"Jareth shrugged and crunched another pecan. "Probably not," he said. "I doubt Raspiel would risk poisoning the entire Court just to get me."

"Then why aren't you eating anything?"

"Because it's a risk I'm not willing to take, and because I wouldn't put it past the bastard to have one of his faithful servants slip it into something under my eyes."

"I thought Fae were immortal," Sarah said. "Would poison actually kill you?"

Jareth smiled. "No, poison would not kill me. However, the right mixture of magic and malice might."

Sarah gave him a confused look. "Magic and malice?"

"A potion," he clarified and popped another pecan in his mouth. He brought his wine goblet to his nose and inhaled the scent. He must have decided it was potion-free, because he took a long drink before putting it down.

Sarah pushed bits of quail around in the creamy yellow sauce, but she suddenly wasn't very hungry.

"You're not eating, my dear," commented a fat Fae man with a curled handlebar mustache who was sitting across the table from her.

As she watched, he picked up his own whole quail with his bejeweled hands, tore a piece off with his teeth, and swallowed it almost without chewing. Sarah shifted her eyes to either side of the fat little man to see if anyone else was as disgusted by this display as she was. Apparently not. They all seemed to not even notice, and farther along the table, she saw another man doing very much the same thing with his food.

"No," Sarah said faintly. "I'm not . . . I'm not very hungry."

She put her knife and fork down on her plate and the chubby little man, finished with his own quail, reached across the table, snatched hers, and began eating with gusto.

Sarah put her shaking hands in her lap and looked away from the revolting spectacle to meet Jareth's laughing eyes. "You don't approve of their table manners?"

"What table manners?" she whispered back.

Jareth laughed and passed her the pecans. Sarah took a handful and did her best to eat them without looking at any of the other guests. She was already praying for the eighth course—not so she could eat it, mind, but so they could get the fuck out of there without insulting anyone.

Though at the moment, she would have been willing to insult all kinds of people.

Sarah's left hand unconsciously strayed up to her throat to finger the wand pendant.

The second course was soup, which Sarah tasted, and one taste was more than enough. It was cloyingly sweet and creamy.

"Do they put sugar and cream in everything?" She asked Jareth.

"Almost," he said with an amused grin. "You'll notice that many of the elders do not have all their teeth."

"And that's such a surprise," she said sarcastically.

Following the soup, there was pasta, salad, meats, and several courses of deserts, none of which Sarah or Jareth partook of.

She shared an orange with him and a twist of marbled rye bread, and together they finished off two bottles of very good red wine.

"You better not get drunk on that," Jareth warned her after her fifth glass. "I completely understand if you wish to drink yourself into an inebriated stupor, I only ask that you not do it here."

Sarah laughed and drained her sixth glass. "Don't worry about it. I took Binge Drinking 101 in college. There's no way I'm going to get drunk off of a little merlot—or even a lot of merlot."

Jareth lifted a skeptical brow at that, but didn't mention it again.

"Is your young lady getting a tid bit tipsy, Jareth?" a smooth female voice said from across the table.

They both glanced up to see Raspiel's wife, Elipsabet standing in front of them. The fat little Fae man across from Sarah gave the queen an alarmed look and tried to say, 'My lady' with his mouth full of crème brulèe and ended up drooling it down his shirtfront.

"Oh dear," Elipsabet said with a merry little laugh. "Poor Wendel. I'll have a servant attend to you presently."

Wendel gave the queen an apologetic look and went back to his coffee.

"I trust you are both enjoying your meals," the queen went on, eyeing Sarah with a maternal look in her eyes that Sarah found entirely unconvincing. "Now Jareth, have you seen my lord's latest acquisition?"

Jareth regarded her coolly, but under the table, he took Sarah's hand and laced his fingers with hers. "No, lady Elipsabet, I don't believe I have."

Elipsabet clapped her hands together excitedly. "Oh, good. I wanted to show him to you myself," she said. She was positively gushing. "Jonas," she called, and gestured to a young man that Sarah hadn't noticed before. "Jonas, come here so Jareth can have a look at you."

Jareth squeezed Sarah's hand as the young man approached their table.

Sarah didn't see what all the fuss was about. He was pale and blond, and not at all attractive looking. He walked with his head down in a slow deliberate shuffle, as though he'd had one or both of his legs broken at one time and they had not mended properly. His hair was lank and his skin was oily and covered in pock marks.

Wait—pock marks? Could the Fae get chickenpox? Somehow Sarah didn't think so. Chickenpox was a human disease.

Jareth knew the instant that Sarah realized that the young boy named Jonas was human, and he tightened his hand on hers in warning.

He need not have bothered. Sarah made her face carefully blank as the boy came to stand before them.

Sarah noted with surprise that he wore a thick leather collar around his neck.

"Well, what do you think?" Elipsabet asked.

"Very nice," Jareth said dully.

The Fae woman seemed not to notice his lack of enthusiasm. "I knew you would think so," she said. "After all, you deal with the creatures all the time, don't you?"

Sarah almost said something at Elipsabet's mention of 'the creatures', but Jareth bore down savagely on her hand, grinding her fingers together, and she wisely changed her mind.

"Jonas, where are your manners?" Elipsabet asked. "You bow before royalty, you know that."

Jonas obediently bent into a courtly bow.

"Isn't that clever?" Elipsabet said. "Raspiel taught him that."

Sarah didn't know which horrified her more, the way the Unseelie queen talked about Jonas like he was a well-trained dog, or the blank, dead look in the man's grey eyes.

"My dear, you have such an unusual name," Elipsabet said to Sarah. "Sarah. Pretty enough, but not one I've heard before."

Sarah sent Jareth a questioning look. Just what was this woman up to? She didn't have to wait long to find out.

"But Jonas tells us that it's a quite common name among women in the Aboveground," she said, her bright blue eyes boring into Sarah's. "Among human's. Is that not so, Jonas?"

"It is so, mistress," the human replied tonelessly.

Sarah felt Jareth tense beside her and squeezed his hand reassuringly. The six years of acting classes she'd taken in high school and college were now going to pay off.

"Really?" Sarah said, sounding only mildly interested. "My parents often visited the Aboveground. I suppose it's possible that they heard the name while on one of their sojourns there."

Elipsabet did not seem to have heard her. "And we all know that the Goblin King has a rather strong affinity for mortals, don't you Jareth?"

Jareth regarded her the way he might a vile, poisonous slug on the toe of his boot. "They amuse me."

She gave a little light and tossed some of her gold hair over one shoulder. "Oh, yes, they're quite good at that, aren't they?"

"Just what exactly is it you want, Queen Elipsabet?" Jareth demanded.

Elipsabet was speechless for a moment, a little taken aback by his bluntness. "Well, I suppose I would like proof that your lady is who she says she is."

Sarah stared at her for a long moment, then gently, but firmly pulled her hand from Jareth's so that she could steeple them on the table before her. "How exactly do you propose I do that, lady Elipsabet?" she asked.

Elipsabet had regained her earlier composure. "I do so love your Goblin Kings eyes," she said. "So lovely. So disturbing. If you could give Jareth's eyes to Jonas, well then, I would have to concede that you are in fact Sidhe, to possess such power."

Sarah looked at Jareth, his left eye as dark as shadows in the night, his right eye the clear blue of a cloudless sky at morning. When he nodded, she gestured for the boy Jonas to lean forward. When he did, she pressed her thumb over the closed eyelid of Jonas' right eye, thought of it as a different color, and then willed it to be so.

When she withdrew her hand and Jonas opened his eye, it was no longer grey-blue, but vibrantly green. He now had one blue eye and one green eye.

"That's very nice," Elipsabet said approvingly. "Though not precisely what I had in mind. But if you don't have magic enough to change them both, well that's certainly understandable these days. What with belief in the Above ground what it is, it's surprising that any of us have any magic anymore."

Elipsabet was baiting her, she knew that. Still, Sarah was playing a part now, and while Sarah the human would have just agreed with her and let it drop, Sarah the Seelie Sidhe had more vanity than that and saw it as below her dignity to let such a slight pass.

"Power, or lack there of, has very little to do with it," Sarah said calmly. "It's just that I happen to like Jareth's eyes too—in Jareth's head."

Beside her, Jareth chuckled approvingly. Had he actually been worried that Sarah wouldn't be able to handle herself in the midst of courtly intrigue? She seemed to be doing a fine job of it so far.

"Why don't I turn your Jonas into a toad and have him tap-dance around the table for you?" Sarah suggested, voice thick with sarcasm.

Her cynicism was completely wasted on the Fae Queen. "You could do that?"

Sarah laughed softly. She was enjoying herself immensely. Two more courses had been served and cleared away during their conversation, and as soon as the next one came, they were leaving, even if she had to drag Jareth out the door by his hair.

"If I can turn a goblin into a silver candlestick holder," Sarah said, "transforming your filthy little human into something that he already highly resembles should be a piece of cake."

Jonas himself didn't seem to even notice that he was the topic under discussion. He kept fidgeting and, though he kept his head down in subservience, his eyes never paused on one thing for very long.

He reminded Sarah a little bit of a junkie she'd known in college. Her first love actually, Henry Cain. Henry had had a thousand dollar a day heroine addiction all through school. He'd tried to go cold turkey a couple of times their senior year, at Sarah's insistence, and he had fidgeted and twitched just like Jonas.

A month after they graduated—her to go on to teach Poe and Hemmingway to bored children, Henry to a promising career in the movies—he'd been found dead in a hotel suite in Miami. The housekeeper had found him with the needle still in his arm.

"Sarah," Jareth said beside her, bringing her back to the matter at hand.

"What?"

"Where were you just now?"

Sarah waved it away like it didn't matter. "Memory Lane," she told him, then turned her attention back to Elipsabet, who was looking at her like she expected her to say something. "Excuse me. Did you say something?"

Elipsabet's eyes narrowed a little at being so easily overlooked. "I don't believe I'll take you up on your offer. As entertaining as it would undoubtedly be, we're quite fond of Jonas."

"I could turn him back," Sarah said, then she shrugged. "But I might not."

"Why not?" Elipsabet asked warily.

"I am of the opinion that he might be better suited to life as a toad."

With that, The Seelie queen turned her attention away from Sarah to Jareth. "Your uncle is here," she informed him, her voice sharp with insult on behalf of her pet human. "I just thought you should know. In case you wished to see him."

"I don't," Jareth said flatly.

"Well then," she huffed, then without anything else to say, she turned on her heal in a swirl of gold lamè and blonde curls and marched back to her seat at the high table with Jonas following obediently in her wake.

Not for the first time, Sarah was fervently grateful that she belonged to the Goblin King. Jareth might regard her with one part tolerance and two parts frustration, but at least he didn't make her wear a collar or call him 'master'.

"That went well," she said. Sarah looked down at her plate. There were small little cooked things resembling the whole carcasses of mice floating in a broth.

"You did very well," Jareth agreed.

"Who is this uncle of yours?" she asked. "And why don't you want to see him?"

Jareth leaned back in his chair. "Uncle Iglaemus," he said after a minute. "He is—he was—my mother's eldest brother. He is High King of the Seelie Court, and he disapproves of my very existence. Takes it personally, you understand, because the way he sees it—the way the whole family sees it—my mother disgraced them all by breeding with a goblin, and I am the physical reminder of that shame. Sort of a slap in the face."

"Oh," Sarah said. "I'm sorry I asked."

"It doesn't matter," Jareth said, though Sarah could see from the tense set of his shoulders that it did, a little.

She looked back down at her plate and pushed one of the little meat things around with her spoon long enough to be almost certain that they were, in fact, mice. "What course is this?" she asked.

Jareth looked down at his own plate with a grimace. "I have no idea," he said and stood. "Let's go home."

Sarah took his hand as he helped her to her feet. She was in total agreement.


	15. 15

Before they could leave, Raspiel extracted a return invitation from Jareth for him and Elipsabet to visit the Castle Beyond the Goblin City. The Unseelie king implied that it was only right for Jareth to return the favor and give them a tour of the Labyrinth.

When Jareth politely agreed, it took nearly every fiber of Sarah's being not to stare at him in astonishment.

Once outside of the Unseelie mountain castle, Sarah turned on him. "Why in God's name would you invite them for a visit? They're horrible."

"That may be, but the fact still remains that Raspiel was correct," Jareth said.

"What?"

"When one is a guest in another's home, it is only polite to extend the same courtesy to them, should they express such a desire," Jareth explained calmly. He was forming another bubble-crystal to transport them as he spoke.

Sarah made a frustrated growling sound in the back of her throat and began taking her hair down from its elaborate braids. "You and your damned courtesy," she grumbled. "Why can't you be rude just once?"

"It takes less effort to be polite. And it arouses less suspicion," he said.

"Yeah? But it's not too smart to invite your enemy into your own home, or didn't you think of that?"

"I did think of that," Jareth said, his voice going cold. "I judged the danger to be minimal, as the Castle is my stronghold of power. We are in less danger there than we were in Rapiel's court.

"Oh, that's fantastic," she said, rolling her eyes. "That's like saying it's safer to invite a crazed mountain lion into your own living room than it is for you to join him in his cave. Semantics."

"I do not know that word," Jareth said.

"Well this isn't exactly the ideal time for a vocabulary lesson," Sarah snapped.

"Sarah," he said conversationally.

"What?"

"You're behaving like a shrew."

Sarah was struck dumb—a condition that only lasted a few short seconds before she began spewing invective at him. He was relatively immune to her curses as he did not understand the meaning behind most of them. He caught the word 'bastard' being repeated several times with increasing fervency, but was not particularly disturbed by it.

Jareth heaved an irritated sigh and held up a hand to forestall her tirade. "Much as I enjoy being likened to various parts of the human anatomy and foul-smelling beasts of burden, I was under the impression that you were as eager as I am to be gone from this place. However, if you've changed your mind, I'm sure it would be no trouble at all to persuade Raspiel to lend us a room for the night, and we can go home in the morning. Not until we've shared breakfast with them, of course—"

"Okay, okay," Sarah said hastily. _Christ no, don't make me have breakfast with them._ She could just imagine what revolting little delicacies that would include. Unhatched chicks boiled in some manner of cream sauce, or—she cut the thought off before she could imagine some other thoroughly disgusting entree.

"Let's get out of here," she said, and stepped through the wall of the bubble.

Jareth followed her and soon they were back in the throne room of the Castle.

"This place never looked so good," Sarah said. She crossed to the throne and flopped down in it. It wasn't nearly as comfortable as she'd imagined. "Jesus, I need a drink," she muttered. "A really big one."

With that thought, she fell asleep.

Jareth shook his head wryly and conjured a blanket to cover her, then went to find his own bed.

When Sarah woke the next morning, she had a crick in her neck and a monstrous headache. She wished she could attribute it to a hangover—at least if it had been a hangover, she was sure she would have enjoyed earning it—but the memories of the previous evening banished that optimistic idea before it was even fully formed.

There was a shuffling sound nearby and she cracked one eye open to investigate. Directly opposite her a little goblin with crinkled horns and patchwork fur was writing something on the wall with a nub of charcoal.

'Fickin (unintelligible) sunbich," Sarah read with amusement. And under that, 'as hols.'

Well, the goblins certainly were prolific little buggers, Sarah thought with a grin.

Thereafter, Sarah endeavored to teach some of the goblins to read and write. It was what she did—had done, she corrected herself—for a living after all. How hard could it be?

Much harder than teaching high school children the fundamentals of Faulkner, she soon found out.

Most of the goblins could speak in single syllable words if prompted. So far Midge was the only one that she had found who could speak in double syllables. He could also write his own name, though exact spelling often varied.

Sarah's lessons provided Jareth with no end of entertainment. In his opinion, she was wasting her time, and he said so, but as Sarah had retorted, it was hers to waste.

The way Sarah figured it, if all she succeeded in doing was teaching them how to spell the profanities they insisted on decorating the Castle walls with correctly, she could count it as job well done.

To her surprise, Midge did not prove to be Sarah's most promising student. He continually insisted on spelling his name with no 'd', or with two 'd's, and could not say a three syllable word to save his scruffy little soul. As she wasn't that fond of the annoying little beast anyway, she didn't force the issue.

Her best student turned out to be the sweet baby goblin she'd rescued from Shire in the dungeons. His name was Perrin, which Sarah thought was interesting, as he was unable to even pronounce it until she taught him how. He learned quickly and within six weeks, she was able to have a conversation with him—albeit a very simple conversation, like one might have with a toddler, but a conversation none the less.

She firmly believed that his aptitude for language stemmed primarily from his childlike desire to please her. He soon overcame his fear of Shire and became Sarah's constant companion, and could most of the time be seen, either following close at her heal, curled up in her lap like a puppy, or propped on her hip like a baby.

As her other 'students' began to lose interest in her lessons in favor of resuming their previous mischief-making, Perrin soon became her only pupil. This was fine with Sarah, who thought it was much better to have one interested student than a hundred indifferent ones.

"You'll never teach them how to talk," Jareth told her one afternoon as she was sitting down with the little goblin in the throne room for another lesson. "Let alone read or write."

"Them?" Sarah asked, indicating the goblins currently scrawling the word 'Fuck-heads' in giant letters across the mantelpiece with the juices of mashed up glowworms. "Probably not. However, if you'll notice, they're spelling is perfect."

He lifted a brow and studied the writing again. "Is it? And what exactly is a 'fuck-head'?"

Sarah thought about it. "Well, there are several possible definitions," she said at last. "None of which I particularly want to get into with you at the moment."

Jareth gave her a knowing look and smiled. "Maybe later then."

"Look, smart ass," Sarah said, amused despite herself, "I've already taught him a verse of Yeats."

"What the devil is a Yeats?"

Sarah ignored that and directed Perrin to recite.

"Come away, oh human child/ To the waters and the wild/ With a fairy hand in hand/ For the world's more full of weeping/ Than you can understand."

"Perfect," Sarah said, petting the goblin's head approvingly. He looked up at her with worshipful eyes and smiled.

"I suppose you think that's funny," Jareth said.

She laughed at the look on his face and said, "Yes, actually I do."

"It makes no difference," he said. "You've taught a goblin how to parrot a few lines of poetry. That doesn't mean anything."

"It means that with enough determination, they can be taught, and more importantly, they can learn," Sarah said. "Besides, he wasn't exactly parroting anything. He memorized it. It took me two weeks to teach him that."

"Wasted effort if you ask me," he grumbled.

"Well then, it's a good thing I wasn't asking you."

Perrin picked that moment to stick his tongue out at his king. Jareth scowled at the creature, who glared back at him, clinging to the sleeve of Sarah's shirt. The impertinent little monster was learning more than English from Sarah. Jareth had a feeling that this did not bode well for his ability to inspire discipline in his subjects. Not that they had any to begin with, but it would make it much more difficult for him to pretend that there was if they started blowing raspberries at him when he passed.

_**For those who are interested, here is the complete poem mentioned in the above chapter:**_

The Stolen Child

W.B. Yeats

Where dips the rocky highland  
Of Sleuth wood in the lake  
There lies a leafy island  
Where flapping herons wake  
The drowsy water rats  
There we've hid our fairy vats  
Full of berries  
And of Reddest Stolen Cherries.

Come away oh human child  
To the waters and the wild  
With a fairy hand in hand  
For the world's more full of weeping  
Than you can understand

Where the wave of moonlight glosses  
The dim grey sands with light  
By far off the furthest roses  
We foot it all the night  
Weaving olden dances  
Mingling hands and mingling glances  
Till the moon has taken flight  
To and fro we leap  
And chase the frothy bubbles  
Whilst the world is full of troubles  
And is anxious in it's sleep

Come away oh human child  
To the waters and the wild  
For the world's more full of weeping  
Than you can understand

Where the wandering water gushes  
From the hills above glen car  
In pools among the rushes  
That scarce could bathe a star  
We seek for slumbering trout  
And whispering in their ears  
Give them unquiet dreams  
Leaning softly out  
From ferns that drop their tears  
Over the young streams

Come away oh human child  
To the waters and the wild  
For the World's more full of weeping  
Than you can understand

Away with us he's going  
The solemned eyed  
He'll bear no more the lowing  
Of the calves on the warm hillside  
Or the kettle on the hob  
Sing peace into his breast  
Or see the brown mice bob  
Round and round the oatmeal chest

Come away oh human child  
To the waters and the wild  
For the world's more full of weeping  
Than you can understand

For he comes, the human child  
To the waters and the wild  
With a faery hand in hand  
For the world is more full of weeping  
Than you can understand


	16. 16

Sarah woke up in the dark and lay listening in the silence for the sound that had roused her from her dreamless sleep. There was nothing to hear but the sound of the wind moaning around the Castle towers and the steady sleeping breath of Perrin cuddled up close to her side.

Very gently, she moved the goblin away so that she could slip from the bed. Perrin mumbled something unintelligible in his sleep, tucked his knees up to his little chest, and settled back with a sigh.

Sarah slipped a light robe over her chemise, lit a candle with a snap of her fingers, and cautiously made her way down the spiral staircase, listening intently for the sound of an intruder or—more likely—goblins getting up to mischief.

She stepped onto the landing and went very still.

There sat Jareth on his throne, shirtless, head down, shoulders slumped, dancing a small crystal orb idly over his fingers. On the floor in one corner, Sarah could faintly see the glittering shards of another crystal. Jareth had apparently hurled it at the wall, and that was the sound she'd heard.

"Jareth?" Sarah waited for him to look up, and when he didn't, she tentatively stepped down from the landing. "Jareth?"

He said nothing and made no move to suggest he had heard her. He just kept playing the little crystal ball over the back of his hand and staring at the floor between his feet as though he were mapping out the world on its stones.

A little worried now; Sarah went to him and knelt. "Jareth? Are you alright?"

Nothing, not even the slightest downward flicker of an eyelash. He was completely absorbed in his own thoughts; the world outside did not exist.

Sarah pressed a hand to his forehead and tilted his head up, forcing him to meet her eyes. "Jareth?"

His eyes drifted closed once, and when they opened again, the haunting blankness was gone and she knew that he was seeing her. "Jareth, what's wrong?"

He stopped playing with the crystal in his hand and it popped like a bubble. "Nothing," he said. He rested the back of one hand on her shoulder and began twining a lock of her waist length hair through his fingers. "Nothing," he repeated softly.

"Then why are you sitting here in the dark with—?"

Jareth suddenly cupped her face in his hands and drew her forward. He kissed her, and this time there was a fierceness and urgency that their other kisses had lacked. He took her mouth as he wanted to take her body, using teeth and tongue to draw small whimpers from her throat. When he broke the kiss, they were both shaking, and when he wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed his face to her belly, she did not resist.

Sarah was afraid of Jareth, not because she thought he would hurt her—she was fairly certain that he would never lay a hand on her in anger—but because of how much she wanted him. She wanted him more every day she was with him. She could not remember a time when she wanted anything as much as she wanted Jareth. One touch, one kiss, a rare tender look. She savored them all, kept them secured in her pocket like colorful little pebbles, to be taken out and looked at again later, or just touched every now and then for comfort.

And this wanting terrified her more than violence or anger would have. Violence she could fight. But not this, not this aching need that made her feel in danger of losing herself. She wondered if a century from now she would even recognize the young girl who defied the Goblin King and stormed the Castle to rescue a baby. Would she remember that baby's name? And if she didn't, if she became something else, something like Elipsabet, or any one of the golden Sidhe, and forgot the world above, would she care?

With a groan, Jareth nuzzled her belly and squeezed her tightly against him. Sarah didn't know what was wrong—and something obviously was—but she could see that he needed reassurance of some kind, so she accepted his embrace. She ran her fingers lightly through his hair and made nonsense soothing noises in her throat.

She did this until she felt his hands venture lower and his mouth press against the under curve of her breast through the fabric of her chemise. "Jareth," she said and pushed at his shoulder.

"Hmm?"

He nipped her breast lightly and she tensed. "Jareth, don't."

"Why not?" He murmured. Without waiting for an answer, he caught her nipple in his teeth through the fabric and tugged lightly.

Sarah gasped, her fingers biting into his shoulders. "Jareth," she said anxiously, tugging at his hair to get him to look up at her.

He let go and shifted his gaze to her face. "What's wrong?"

Sarah's heart was racing, her breath coming in harsh pants. "Jareth," she said, "you can't ask this of me."

"I am not asking," he growled, his expression keen and intent.

Sarah's pulse quickened in alarm at the predatory gleam in his eyes. "Jareth, please—"

He pressed one last lingering kiss into the curve of her shoulder and stood. "Goodnight, Sarah," he said, flatly, then turned and walked away, leaving her alone at the foot of his throne.

Sarah pressed a violently shaking hand to her throat and tried to compose herself. When she felt like she could hold the candle without dropping it, she picked it up and returned to her rooms.

She didn't sleep much the rest of the night.


	17. 17

Jareth supposed that abandoning Sarah on the cold floor of the throne room wasn't the most honorable thing he could have done. However, he wasn't feeling particularly chivalrous at the moment.

He was currently experiencing the painful spasms that came from unsatisfied lust—and it was all Sarah's fault.

What was she doing there in the first damned place? In the middle of the night . . . with the faint light of that candle throwing her figure into beautiful silhouette under the white material of her gown.

And that was probably not the best thing in the world to be thinking about at the moment—in his condition. He raked his hands through his hair in frustration and slammed the door to his chambers closed with a resounding bang that echoed down the hall.

Gods below, he wanted her so badly he was shaking. He could still taste her, sweet as sugared violets melting on his tongue.

She belonged to him now, though he let her forget it, and though any other Fae would have taken what he wanted, Jareth couldn't do that. She would not have forgiven him, and like it or not, that mattered.

By right, Sarah was his property—a tradition that had originally been introduced to protect captured human wives from being killed or stolen by other Fae—but Jareth had a difficult time seeing her that way. She was Sarah Williams, the lovely, defiant, infuriating girl who bested his Labyrinth, his most prized creation. She was not an object.

Yet, she belonged to him. She belonged to him in a way that had absolutely nothing at all to do with tradition or property. He sensed it now, as he had sensed it those ten years before when she stood against him.

And he resented like hell that her acceptance of him had been forced upon her by desperation and circumstance rather than desire and belief.

Jareth snarled viciously and slammed his fist into the wall beside his bed. He heard the dry sound of snapping bones and felt the satisfying agony that closely followed.

That was certainly one way of beating back lust.

The only problem was that it healed almost instantly, and he was left with a raging erection and an empty bed.


	18. 18

Sarah deliberately stayed out of Jareth's way for the next couple of weeks. She occupied her time with books and Perrin's English lessons, and only saw the Goblin King at supper time and when they passed each other in the halls.

On those occasions, she hurried by him with her eyes determinedly fixed on the floor in front of her. She could feel him watching her but he did not try to talk to her, perhaps sensing that she did not want him to.

With her mind starving for stimulation of any kind, Sarah found herself turning, of all places, to the goblins for inspiration. She didn't start scrawling naughty words on the stone walls, as this had ceased to be entertaining for her sometime around the third grade, but after reading just as much as she could stand of Sir William Fig and the Mad Mookybun, Sarah was craving the literature of her home-world.

She stood before a blank wall in her bed chamber, considering it as an artist might consider a canvas before beginning a new masterpiece, then very slowly, and with infinite care, she began to write in the air with her finger. On the wall, the words she was remembering carved themselves deeply into the bare stone. She wrote everything that she could think of; her favorite poetry, the most beloved passages of her favorite books, lines from plays she'd seen, even a Shakespearian sonnet or two.

At first this went well, and the sought after words sprang instantly to her mind; She covered the walls in bits and pieces of Hemmingway, Twain, Carroll, Mallory, Frost, Dante, Yeats, Shelly, Masefield, Tennyson, and Dickenson. She wrote them down, and had no trouble at all remembering the words, but when she came to Shakespeare, she could not recall the last part of the prologue from _Romeo and Juliet_, which she had had memorized since the age of twelve.

"The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love," she muttered, unable to finish it. "Damn it, I know this!"

Distressed by her inability to remember things that had once been second nature to her, Sarah whirled away and stalked to another blank wall. With rapid gestures she began writing the words to Andrew Marvell's _To His Coy Mistress_, but got no farther than, 'We would sit down, and think which way/ To walk, and pass our long love's day.'

She searched her memory frantically, but the rest of the words, which should have flown like music from her mind, would not come.

What was happening to her? She was an English teacher for Christ's sake, and a damned good one—or she had been. She could dismiss it if she had forgotten something by Houseman, or Plath, whose work she had never liked much anyway, but Shakespeare? Who could forget Shakespeare? These things did not just disappear from your mind.

Tears stinging her eyes, in a panic, she tried to write the words to _The Tiger_ by William Blake, but could not complete that either. The same happened with Coleridge's _Kubla Khan_; she could not continue beyond 'By woman wailing for her demon-lover!'

With a hopeless shriek of despair, she slapped her hands against the cold, unyielding stone. She stood there for a long while, head hanging, desperately trying to control the fear that wanted to rise and smother her.

What was happening? Was it this place, this Underground? Could it be stealing her memories?

"That's stupid," Sarah said, scrubbing tears from her eyes and glaring at the offending wall in front of her. "How can a place steal memories?"

Then she remembered Jareth telling her to guard her tears, that the Underground would take them from her if she let it. Was that how it started then? Take away the memories of the things that mattered; leave her no cause for tears?

"No," she hissed. "I won't let that happen."

She thought of her father, and his beloved face rose easily to her mind. She thought of her mother, covered head to toe in sequins and lace in front of an adoring audience. Then she tried to think of Toby, and all she could think of was the baby in the striped pajamas. However, she figured this probably had more to do with the fact that she had rarely seen him in years, rather than her failing memory.

So she could still remember the big things, it was only the little things that seemed to be missing. But then, maybe that's how it started. Maybe it took the little things first, slowly eating away at the more important things until they were gone too.

Sarah pushed herself away from the wall and climbed up on her bed, glaring almost defiantly at the wall above the carved headboard. Very deliberately, she scrawled the first words of a poem there: 'O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms/ Alone and palely loitering?'

She sat back and studied these words. Perhaps, if she tried to go slowly, carefully, one line at a time, she could remember the rest. She wrote the next line flawlessly, then the next, and the next. She was beginning to feel confident that this time, with this one, maybe, just maybe, she would remember it all. She would keep just this one, and it was a start. _Oh, please, let me just keep this one!_

Then her hand stalled and her heart sank. What came next? What were the words? She knew them; she knew that she knew them.

"Goddamn it to hell," she choked. She stared at the last lines she'd written—'La Belle Dame sans Merci/ Hath thee in thrall!'—then covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.

That was how Jareth found her less than an hour later, arms around her legs, face buried against her knees, rocking back and forth, keening in misery. He paused in the doorway and glanced around the room, noting the words engraved into the stone, but saw nothing new that seemed any cause for such wretched weeping.

Without a word, he climbed up on the bed and reached out to touch her. His hand barely brushed against her back, but she felt it and whipped around in surprise, her palms instinctively pressed against his chest to brace herself.

Jareth tenderly brushed the moisture from the corners of her eyes with his thumbs. "What happened?" he asked.

Sarah's lips trembled and another tear slid down her cheek. "I can't remember," she whispered.

"What can't you remember?"

"The words," she said. "I know them. I do," she insisted as though he doubted her. "But I can't . . . I can't . . . remember them."

"What words, sweeting?" Jareth asked in a soft, calming voice. The words that sprang instantly to his mind were not lines of poetry or passages of literature. _You have no power over me!_ But of course those could not be the words she meant. "What words can't you remember?"

Sarah sniffed and pointed to the poem over the bed.

"La Belle Dame sans Merci?" Jareth asked, rolling the strange words on his tongue with a puzzled expression.

"Yes!" she wailed. She hid her face in Jareth's shirt so he wouldn't see her crying. "I want to go home, Jareth," she said.

"That is not possible," he said, not unkindly. "You know that it would mean your death if you did."

"I don't care!"

Jareth brushed her hair out of her face and made her look at him. "I do," he said. "I do. And I'm sorry, but I will not allow it."

"I hate you," Sarah said, but the statement lacked the heat of real conviction.

"I know you do."

She gave a watery sigh and snuggled against his chest with her head resting on his shoulder. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean that. I don't really hate you."

Jareth smiled and stroked her back in a light, soothing pattern. "But you want to hate me," he said. "That's almost the same thing."

"Hmm." Sarah closed her eyes. She was suddenly very tired. Going into hysterics was exhausting.

Jareth eased her back on the bed, covered her with a sheet, and started to leave. Sarah opened her eyes and grabbed his arm. "Stay," she said.

He studied her intently for a long minute. "Sarah, you need to rest," he said reluctantly.

"I know. Stay with me." When he didn't move, just stood there by her bed looking down at her with his odd mismatched eyes, she gave a tug to his arm. "I just want you to sleep next to me. I don't want be alone right now, Jareth."

When she pulled on his arm again, he let her pull him back on the bed with her. "Are you sure you can trust me not to take advantage of the situation?" he asked, but there was a smile on his face.

"Probably not," she said. "But at the moment you're all I've got."

Jareth grinned as he stretched out against her back, wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her against him. Her hair brushed his face and he inhaled. It smelled nice; like ginger.

Sarah rested her head on his shoulder and sighed. "Nice," she mumbled, and fell asleep.

Nice? Jareth wondered. What exactly had she meant by that? Surely she wasn't referring to him.

He shifted a little and brushed a lock of hair behind her ear, his fingers lingering on the curve of her brow, and caressing the soft skin by her earlobe. He brushed his fingers over her eyelids, remembering the fantastic changeable color of her eyes; sometimes they looked green, and sometimes brown, and sometimes, in the right light, or in moments of deep passion, it seemed that both colors were battling for supremacy.

She made a sleepy, contented sound in her throat and wriggled against him.

Jareth went very still and gritted his teeth against the pleasurable little feelings her movements evoked. He put one knuckle in his mouth and bit down.

Hell, he decided, was a bed of silk and linen, and a dark haired sleeping damsel in distress.

_There was a considerable amount of literature and poetry mentioned in this chapter. For those readers who do not enjoy this, that's really too bad. For those who are interested, I'm sure that you can find more information about anything cited here on the net. _

**_For the purposes of this story, the only poem that will be of any importance to the plot is _La Belle Dame sans Merci_. It will appear again in a later chapter. For those who do not know, the English translation of the title is: _The Beautiful Lady without Pity**

La Belle Dame sans Merci

(Ballad)

John Keats

Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,  
Alone and palely loitering?  
The sedge has withered from the lake,  
And no birds sing.

Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,  
So haggard and so woe-begone?  
The squirrel's granary is full,  
And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow,  
With anguish moist and fever dew,  
And on thy cheek a fading rose  
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,  
Full beautiful--a faery's child,  
Her hair was long, her foot was light,  
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,  
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;  
She looked at me as she did love,  
And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,  
And nothing else saw all day long,  
For sidelong would she bend, and sing  
A faery's song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,  
And honey wild, and manna dew,  
And sure in language strange she said--  
"I love thee true."

She took me to her elfin grot,  
And there she wept and sighed full sore,  
And there I shut her wild eyes  
With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep  
And there I dreamed--ah! woe betide!  
The latest dream I ever dreamed  
On the cold hill's side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,  
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;  
They cried--"La Belle Dame sans Merci  
Hath thee in thrall!"

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,  
With horrid warning gaped wide,  
And I awoke and found me here,  
On the cold hill's side.

And this is why I sojourn here  
Alone and palely loitering,  
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,  
And no birds sing.


	19. 19

Jareth would not have believed it possible, but he had fallen asleep.

He woke sometime later when he felt Sarah's hands on his face, her fingers smoothing over his forehead, the length of his nose, the high planes of his cheekbones, the curve of his lips, tracing each feature like a blind woman seeing by touch.

He lay perfectly still under her roaming hands, not daring to move or open his eyes lest she take them away. When her fingers pressed against his lips, he wanted to flick his tongue out and catch it, but he resisted the temptation and her fingers moved down to shape the curve of his chin and the edge of his jaw.

"Jareth," she murmured, touching the fan of his eyelashes with her fingertips. "Jareth, I know you're awake."

He could feel her breath close to his mouth, and without opening his eyes, he reached out and cupped the back of her head in one hand and kissed her. She tasted exactly as he remembered; like violets and sugar; like honey and sin.

She surprised him by kissing him back, flicking her tongue out to twine with his, a low purr in the back of her throat. When she broke the kiss to catch her breath, they stared into each others eyes from a mere three inches apart.

"I knew you were awake," Sarah told him softly.

The corner of his mouth twitched. "Did you?"

"Yes." Her fingernails lightly grazed the linen front of his shirt. She tugged a little at the material, loosening it.

Jareth caught her hands and stilled their restless movements. "Sarah, stop it."

She pulled one hand out of his grasp and pressed it against his chest. "Why?"

He sighed and looked away from her. "Because we are not starting this again if you're going to stop me before we finish it," he said. "Believe it or not, I do not enjoy walking around in a constant state of frustrated arousal."

Sarah covered her mouth with her free hand and snickered.

Jareth smiled humorlessly.

"I'm sorry," she said, trying to control her laughter. "It's really not funny. I know it's not funny, but you have to admit—"

"I do not."

Sarah grinned. "I'm sorry," she repeated.

Jareth lifted her hand and pressed his lips gallantly to the back of it. "Good."

She smacked his shoulder. "You arrogant son of a bitch," she said.

He lifted a brow, unoffended. "You just apologized," he pointed out.

"So?"

"I was just accepting your apology."

"Well, you don't have to be so patronizing about it."

"I'm sorry," he said, grinning in a way that suggested he was anything but.

"You should be," Sarah said, her tone haughty.

"You know," Jareth said, playing with a lock of her hair, "we could do this all day."

"What's that?" Sarah asked. Her eyes watched his mouth as he spoke and remembered what it felt like against her own.

"I could insult you, you could pretend to be offended, then I would apologize, but not as though I really mean it, and then—"

Sarah interrupted him, "Or—?"

He brushed his thumb along her bottom lip, tracing the full shape of it, as he watched her eyes slowly darken. "I'm sure we can think of other, more . . . pleasant ways to pass the time."

"Jareth, that is such a . . . line," Sarah said.

"A line?"

"You know," she gestured vaguely, "a line—something you say specifically for the purpose of getting into someone's pants."

He grinned wickedly, "That was kind of the idea."

"Really," she said dryly, "I hadn't noticed."

"Hmm. Really," Jareth murmured, sliding his hands under the hem of her shirt and splaying his fingers over her hips. "I should think it was rather obvious."

This new, playful, teasing Jareth was new to her. But the things he could do to her with the briefest touch and the softest kiss were both frightening and familiar.

She reclined back on her pillow as he began unbuttoning her shirt from the bottom up, pressing quick kisses to her belly with each one. When he almost had it completely unfastened, she felt him stop and go still. She opened her eyes and looked down to see him staring at something just between and below her breasts.

Jareth touched the little picture on her skin with one finger and gave her a questioning look. "What is this?"

"A tattoo," Sarah said, a little embarrassed. "I . . . I got it when I was sixteen."

"Why?" He brushed the little owl tattoo again.

She squirmed under him and tried to sit up, but he easily held her. "Because . . . Because I didn't want to forget."

"The Labyrinth?" he asked.

Sarah stilled and met his eyes. "Anything," she said honestly. "I didn't want to forget any of it. Even you."

"Even me," he murmured, and pressed a kiss to the spot. "I'm flattered."

"Especially you."

He plucked another button free to find her breasts, covered in pale yellow lace and seed pearls. "Now I am humbled," he said lightly. "That almost sounded like a declaration of love."

She laughed a little at the idea of a humble Jareth. The laugh caught in her throat when his rough cat-tongue darted under the cup of her bra against the underside of her breast.

Jareth finished unbuttoning her shirt, spread the folds apart, and sat back with a hot, yearning look in his heavy-lidded eyes. When Sarah reached for him, he took her hand and laced his fingers with hers, effectively trapping it.

"Jareth—"

"I want you to tell me—Sarah, do you want this, or do you want me to stop?"

She blinked at him. He had to be kidding.

"Sarah, if you tell me to stop, I will," he said. "I won't like it, but I will stop if it's what you want."

Sarah laughed and put one hand over her eyes. He was serious. Jesus. She was laying there with him on top of her, every nerve and cell in her body tingling and burning, and he was asking her if she wanted him to stop. Even had she wanted to make him stop, she was so far beyond the point where such a thing was possible, that it really didn't matter. When she looked at him again, he was watching her with his head tilted curiously to one side.

"Jareth," she said, taking a deep breath around her laughter, "shut up."

"But—"

"Touch me, kiss me, do me—for fucks sake, stop being so damned honorable!" She took a deep breath and glared at him. "It's weird."

He leaned down and trailed kisses along her jaw and down her neck, pausing every so often to add a light nip of teeth. "Exactly how dishonorable am I permitted to be?"

She pulled his shirt free of his trousers and ran her fingers under it, over his abdomen. "Very," she said with her mouth just below his bellybutton.

More by accident than design, they began with Jareth on top, moving slowly, twining together with the silk and linen until their bodies were sheened in sweat. They ended it with Sarah astride him; her back bowed, arms around her own waist, fingernails digging into her own forearms as her body tightened around him in light, fluttering contractions. When she stilled for just a minute, her head hanging, trying to force breath into lungs that felt swollen, he grasped her hips in his hands and helped her to move, to finish it.

Sarah collapsed on Jareth's chest with an exhausted whimper and lay there panting. Every muscle in her body trembled and she felt pleasantly sore and shivery.

Without lifting her head, she ran her fingers up his sweat dampened body and clutched the gold sickle-shaped pendant he always wore around his neck.

"Sarah?" Jareth said cautiously.

"Mmm?" It was really the best she could manage without some kind of real incentive.

"What are you thinking?"

She sighed and with supreme effort, tilted her head to look up at him. She smiled at him tiredly. "I was thinking of something I once heard a professor of mine recite. By a poet named Sarah Teasdale."

He smiled faintly. "You were thinking of poetry?"

"That, and how absolutely fine you look without any clothes on."

He chuckled and stroked a hand through her hair, which was now damp and full of tangles. "Tell it to me," he said. "This poetry you were remembering."

"For one white singing hour of peace," she murmured, "Count many a year of strife well lost/ And for a breath of ecstasy/ Give all you have been, or could be."

"Is that what you think?" Jareth asked. "That you're in danger of losing yourself? That I would change you?"

"Sometimes," she said. She trailed her hands in light circular motions on his chest.

They were both quiet for a while, listening to the gradually slowing beats of each other's hearts. Outside the windows, the sky was darkening, and the Labyrinth had an ethereal radiance under the silver glow of the full moon. The room had become full of shadows, and they could sense each other only as bodies in the darkness.

There was a soft scuttling sound somewhere in the direction of the door, and Sarah lifted her head to look around for the source of the noise, only to find that she couldn't see much beyond the area of the bed.

"Jareth." She poked him in the ribs when he didn't respond. "Jareth, there's something there."

He swore under his breath and moved to lean on one elbow. Finding that he couldn't see either, he snapped his fingers and the candles around the room lit, casting the room in a faint golden glow.

"Majesty," Midge squeaked. He was wearing an absurdly floppy white fedora with a pink feather in the band. He doffed it and bowed so low that his pointed nose touched the floor. His bright eyes were wide and anxious as he took in their state of undress, the sheets in a tangled pile at the foot of the bed, and the irritated looks they were both giving him. "Majesty," he said again, clutching his little clawed fingers together nervously.

"What!" Jareth snapped.

The goblin shot Sarah a furtive glance, then began speaking in a strange lilting, guttural language. It was actually quite pretty in a barbaric sort of way. Oddly, it had never occurred to Sarah that the goblins had a language of their own, and that this might have quite a lot to do with their inability to grasp English.

As Midge spoke, Jareth's expression became more and more severe. When the goblin stopped, he was practically dancing in place in his agitation.

Jareth carefully eased Sarah off of him and got out of the bed. She stretched and lay back on the pillow to watch him move around the room finding his clothes and putting them on. He sat down on the bed as he put his boots on and she grinned at him, trying to coax a smile from his suddenly stony features.

"Jareth, what's wrong?"

"Get dressed," he said, and tossed her her shirt.

Sarah eyed Midge with amusement as he scurried toward the door ahead of his king. She slipped her shirt on and sent a look of longing toward her bathroom. Sex was all well and good—Sex with Jareth was actually quite a large step ahead of 'well and good'—but even so, she didn't want to go around smelling like it for the rest of the night if they weren't going to spend that night in bed.

"I need a shower," she informed him as he was heading out the door. She finished buttoning her shirt and moved toward the bathroom to do just that.

"Sarah, we have a problem," Jareth said.

She paused. "What kind of problem?"

"A big one," he said. His tone was grave, but he was till looking at her bare legs in a distinctly lustful manner.

Sarah smiled. "How big?"

"You want a list of catastrophes that I could compare it to? It's big."

"Fine." She turned her back on him and headed for the shower. "I'll hurry."

_**And here is the poem cited in this chapter, for those who wanted it:**_

Barter

By Sarah Teasdale

Life has loveliness to sell,  
All beautiful and splendid things,  
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,  
Soaring fire that sways and sings,  
And children's faces looking up  
Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,  
Music like a curve of gold,  
Scent of pine trees in the rain,  
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,  
And for your spirit's still delight,  
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,  
Buy it and never count the cost;  
For one white singing hour of peace  
Count many a year of strife well lost,  
And for a breath of ecstasy  
Give all you have been, or could be.


	20. 20

Back in the Aboveground, the first printing of _The Labyrinth_ by Anna Williams hit the shelves, and just as quickly, flew off of them. Out of some kind of loyalty to Sarah, Laura had made sure the book was promoted to an outrageous degree. Advertisement was aimed at older children, meant to appeal to young teenagers and a certain type of adult—those who harbored a secret love for their childhood dreams—but some of them made their way into the homes of toddlers and infants, however inadvertently.

In the nursery of a little colonial house in Acton Massachusetts, Gregory Walsh sat down beside his daughter's antique wrought-iron crib with the book he'd bought on his way home from work. He smiled at the plump-cheeked, smiling baby Emma and adjusted his spectacles, then began to read. After less than thirty minutes, under the deep melodious rhythm of his reading voice, her eyes began to droop. Ten minutes after that, she lay down and curled up with her chubby little thumb in her mouth.

"Sarah stood with her hand on the handle of the door," Gregory read. "'I wish the goblins would come and take you away—right now,' she said, then turned off the light and closed the door." He marked the place with a bit of paper and set the book down on the nightstand. He got up and went over to tuck the blanket around his sweet sleeping Emma, then turned out the light and closed the door behind him as he left.

The next morning his wife, Carol, would call the police, in tears, frantic. Her baby was missing, she said, her baby daughter had been kidnapped . . . please, oh please . . .

In a little loft apartment in downtown New York, twelve year old Meredith Jacobs was reading to her little brother. Ben was two, and he listened to the story with uncommon interest for a child his age. His blue eyes were wide and excited, and he giggled whenever Merry did the voices for the goblins.

"'Where did she learn that rubbish?' the second goblin scoffed," Meredith read, lowering her voice to a reptilian hiss, which made Ben clap his hands over his mouth to hold in his laughter. "'It doesn't even start with 'I wish!'"

"Say the words," Ben said, rocking forward eagerly.

With her finger tracking the lines, Meredith scanned down the page to the spot. "'I wish the goblins would come and take you away—right now."

The bedside lamp that she had been reading by went out as though the plug had been pulled. There was a sudden wind in the room, though there were no windows in the room that it could have come in through. There was a rustling, a smell like the inside of a candy-shop, a sound that was almost music, then silence.

Meredith blinked in the darkness and reached out to find the bed beside her empty where Ben had been sitting. "Ben?"

The emergency phone lines began ringing like crazy exactly one hour and seventeen minutes after the first copy of _The Labyrinth_ left the first bookshop in the hands of the first unwary reader. Babies and toddlers began spontaneously disappearing all over the country, with no explanation other than that they had been kidnapped. But how was that possible? All over the country? Could it be a gang of kidnappers?

That actually wasn't far from the truth.


	21. 21

Sarah heard the commotion before she even reached the bottom of the tower. The goblins were excited about something, and anything that excited them, Sarah thought, couldn't be anything good.

As she entered the throne room, she saw Jareth seated in his throne, staring intently into a crystal cradled in his hands. A goblin carrying something small and giggling went by at a skipping run. There were other goblins doing very much the same thing, or variations of it, all over the place. There were babies everywhere; crawling on the floor, pulling on the goblin's ears and fur, even playing patty-cake for Christ's sake. She saw two goblins tossing a little boy back and forth to each other, the child squealing in either terror or glee—she couldn't actually tell which.

"Jareth, what—" A baby of indeterminable sex, came flying toward her and she threw up a hand immediately to block it. The child froze and hung suspended in the air in front of her, laughing delightedly.

Grumbling to herself, Sarah took the baby in her arms and handed it back to the goblin who had thrown it. "Don't do that," she scolded it. It gave her a sheepish look and trotted off with its prize held triumphantly over its head.

"Jareth, what the fuck is going on?" She demanded, striding over to glare down at the crystal ball. The image was so distorted that she couldn't tell what they were supposed to be looking at. "You're going to give yourself eye-strain," she told him.

He lifted his head and handed her the ball. "See for yourself," he said.

Sarah took the crystal and squinted into it. Inside, she recognized the wall and the gates that opened into the Labyrinth, and outside it, there were people. Lots of people. So far, they had been unable to get the gates to open for them, and a few of the more adventurous—or desperate—individuals had taken to climbing the wall. They weren't making much progress—whenever one of them seemed to be getting close to the top, their foot would slip in some lichen or slime.

"It would seem," Jareth said, then paused. He appeared calm, but she had come to know him a little better in the months since she first began living in the Castle, and she knew that he was angry. Probably very angry. The Goblin King was not one of those men who lost control in his anger; he gained it to an even greater degree. "It would seem that someone . . . someone wrote a book. A book that has been published," he said, giving her a meaningful look. "And, that someone was foolish enough to put the words in it_. The words_, Sarah, exactly as they must be said to banish children into the Underground. Now I wonder, who could have done such an abysmally stupid thing?"

Realization was like a thunderbolt. Sarah gasped and looked around at all the children in wide-eyed horror. "Oh no! Jareth, I . . ."

He nodded. "I thought as much. With your affinity for the written word, it almost had to be you."

"Jareth, I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't think—"

"That's obvious."

She glared at him and tossed his crystal back to him. "I am trying to apologize here. Don't be an asshole."

He lifted a brow at that and snapped his fingers, popping the crystal like a bubble. "Fine. I will accept your apology on one condition."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "What do you want this time, Goblin King? My first born child?"

He went suddenly very still, his gaze sharpening on her face in a way that made her shift uncomfortably.

"It's just a figure of speech," she assured him. "Don't get any ideas. I am not, nor have I ever been, interested in babies. They are manifestly uninteresting creatures by nature."

"I suppose that means you're not going to be begging me for one of your own anytime soon."

"Ha! No, I don't think so," she said. He was teasing her again, and she much preferred a teasing Jareth to an angry one. Angry Jareth could be mean. "Besides, baby-making may be fun, but the resultant baby sort of puts a cramp in your sex-life—or so I've heard."

Jareth grinned and unfolded himself from the throne so that he could look down at her. He caught a strand of her hair, still wet from the shower, between his fingers. "We definitely don't want that."

She smiled back at him, amused. "That's what I thought you'd say."

"Did you indeed?" he murmured, lowering his mouth until she could feel his breath on her lips. He gave her a quick, light kiss on the forehead and turned to pace away from her. "Back to my condition . . ."

Sarah glared wrathfully and folded her arms under her breasts. "Don't think I'm going to let you get away with that," she said.

"What?" He said, all confused innocence.

"You," Sarah said, marching up to him and jabbing a finger at his chest, "are a goddamn tease, and don't think for one minute that I don't see what you're trying to do. Whatever it is, the answer is no."

"Who else would you suggest I leave these precious little darlings too?" Jareth asked, gesturing with one hand to encompass all the crawling little children.

"You have got to be fucking kidding me," Sarah said. "I said I'm sorry, and I am. And don't you look at me like that. You may be good, honey, but nobody's that good."

"But you're human," Jareth pointed out.

"So?"

"And you're a woman."

"You noticed that too, did you?"

He raked his hands through his hair and tilted his head back like he was praying for divine intervention. "Look," he said patiently, "I have to go to the gate at the beginning of the Labyrinth. I have to tell these people the rules, and I have to let them in. Should any of them actually reach the Castle, I'm sure they would take it rather hard if their child was missing some of its limbs when they got it back."

Sarah sat down in the recently vacated throne, leaned back, and crossed her legs. "You're not actually going to make them all run the Labyrinth, are you?"

He gave her a puzzled look. "Yes."

"Can't you just . . . give the children back?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"It's against the rules," he said. "Don't you think I'd give them back if I could? One child I can handle—it can even serve as an interesting diversion—but there must be twenty of them—"

"At least."

"Yes," he agreed. "And believe it or not, I don't fancy having my throne room turned into a nursery."

"Can't you just break the rules this once?" Sarah asked. "After all, they're your rules."

"Some of them are," Jareth said. "But not this one. This one is the Labyrinth's."

Sarah blinked and sat forward. "What do you mean by that?"

Jareth sighed and conjured a chair to sit in. "Everything in the Underground gains its power through belief in the Aboveground. The power of every magical creature is in direct proportion to how many mortals have heard its stories, or songs, or how many humans superstitiously cross themselves when they speak its name. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Sarah said slowly. "But what does this have to do with the Labyrinth? It's not a living creature, it's an inanimate object."

"But it's an object of power," Jareth said. "And as such, gains or loses its power through human belief. I can't just give the children back because that would break its power. Those humans standing outside the gates would never see inside it, and when they went back, when they read this book you have written, they wouldn't believe. They would believe in me, because I have stolen their children, and they would not forget that. But they would not have seen the Labyrinth, they would not have endured its trials to save their young ones, so they would disbelieve. And disbelief is a thousand times more destructive than non-belief."

Sarah put her face in her hands with a sigh. "I'm sorry Jareth. I didn't mean for any of this to happen."

He reached out and lifted her face with a hand under her chin. "I know."

"I'll take care of the kids," she said. "Make sure the goblins don't eat them."

His lips twitched at that, then he stood. "I'll be as quick as I can," he promised.

"Jareth," she said, not looking at him. "How many of them do you think will make it?"

He was silent for a long time, and she thought he wouldn't answer, then he said, softly, "Not many."

She watched him slip his skin and become the white owl in a fog of glitter, then, feeling guilty and a little sad, she waved her hand and turned a passing goblin into a teddy-bear.


	22. 22

There were reasons why some people did not have children. Very good reasons.

Sarah came to this conclusion only moments after Jareth's departure when no less than three of the cute little tykes in her charge simultaneously emptied their bowels, then ran around the throne room expecting her to chase them down, in the process, spreading the stench of their saggy diapers throughout the Castle.

The smell was bad. Anyone who has ever had to change a dirty diaper for their screaming baby brother knows. Some people would argue that dog shit or cat shit was worse, and maybe to some extent that was true, but you don't have to wipe your cat's ass for it. They are pretty much self-reliant creatures.

The only thing that she could say, without question, smelled worse, was Jareth's Bog of Eternal Stench, and at the moment, that wasn't very comforting.

Sarah lifted her eyes heavenward in a silent plea for patience and understanding as the baby girl at her feet plopped down on the floor on her poopy-diapered butt and wriggled around with a little grin on her face. The kids had yet to discover the joys of shit finger painting, but Sarah was pretty sure that given time—and prolonged contact with the goblins—they soon would.

"Come down from there right this instant," she said to a goblin up on a window ledge, who was swinging a toddler upside down from its ankles. She tried to use her stern teacher voice, and got basically the same reaction from the goblin that she had always gotten from her students. The cheeky little beast let go of one of the chortling baby's legs just long enough to flip her the bird.

She was sorely tempted to turn the lot of them to stone—goblins and babies alike—and let Jareth deal with the whole mess when he got back. That she did not do this was either a testament to her strong moral upbringing, or—and she rather thought this one more likely—a hint at some repressed masochistic inclinations.

"Oh no you don't" she said to a scrawny goblin in a blue waistcoat and pointy shoes. He had come up behind the little girl with the full diaper and, like a mother checking if it was time for a change, pulled the back of it back with one finger and peeked inside. "If you throw any of that anywhere, I will turn you into a scrub-brush and use you to wash it off with."

The goblin backed away cautiously, then scampered off to get into other mischief—or a different diaper.

"You, come here," she said to the little girl. She crooked her finger, and the child floated toward her, laughing and waving her hands. "Good God, you smell." She concentrated very hard on clean diapers, anything clean really, anything that did not smell like shit, in fact. When she checked the baby, there was nothing but clean, smooth baby bottom and the faint odor of talcum powder.

It was not the first time that she had found herself intensely grateful to the Goblin King for his amazing gift. It likely would not be the last.

It was in this way that she cleaned the rest of the soiled babies, and by the time the white owl returned to the Castle, she had almost gotten rid of the smell as well. Almost.

Jareth fanned the air in front of his face with a hand. "What is that smell?"

"Baby fecal matter would be my first guess—that's shit, if you didn't know," she added at his look of confusion. She pointed a finger at him and glared. "I am never having sex with you again," she said. "It makes me stupid."

He just crossed his arms over his chest and lifted a brow in that infuriating way he had.

"I don't know what the hell I was thinking to agree to such a thing. I am not—"

"You were probably thinking how guilty you feel," Jareth said quietly. "How this is all—inadvertently or not—your fault. How those parents are all probably worried out of their minds because their children have disappeared and they suddenly find themselves in a strange land, facing a daunting quest, at which they very likely will not succeed. Yes, I think maybe, unless I have entirely misjudged you, you were thinking something just like that."

Sarah sat down on the stone floor, tucked her knees up, and buried her face in her arms, ready to cry. Before she could get started, however, there was a sharp popping sound and she looked up to see two goblins holding yet another child between them. They raised it high over their heads and danced around triumphantly while the kid screamed fit to burst every crystal object within a thousand yards.

Jareth grimaced at the high pitched sound and Sarah gave him a bleak look. "Jareth, you have to do something."

"I can't do anything," he said irritably. "What would you have me do? Break the rules? Break the Labyrinth? The Labyrinth is one of my most powerful means of self-protection, and if I betray it, that protection is lost, for however long it may take to rebuild it. I cannot interfere on their behalf," he said, meaning the parents. "I won't."

"But you could interfere if it meant stopping them," Sarah said. "Like you did with me, with the peach, and the cleaners, and—"

"That was something different, and you know it," he said.

She regarded him silently for several long moments. "How was it different?" she asked at last.

"It was," he hesitated, then shrugged, "personal."

She just stared at him. She didn't need him to explain how it was personal; she understood. It was different, and more personal, when two people were set against each other in combat—whether intellectual or physical—than when an entire flock of desperate people were essentially running a race to the finish against nothing but time. It was more personal because it mattered more. Not that the race of these mothers and fathers did not matter—it did, to them—but with herself and Jareth it had been a matter of pride as well; to win, to not be defeated by the other. In retrospect, Sarah supposed the whole thing was sort of like two wild cats fighting for the right to mate—the male wanting, and the female, though wanting, not willing to relent unless the male could effectively pin her. It was a demeaning analogy, but an apt one for the situation they were in right now. She had been, without question, pinned.

"Alright, I'll allow it was personal," she said. "But the fact remains, you can interfere if you want to, can't you?"

"Only to impede their progress, not to aid them," he said. "Putting obstacles in their way and flashing a bit of magic while I do it makes them believe more."

"This whole thing makes no sense," Sarah said, shaking her head in frustration. "It's some of the most fuck-all logic I've ever heard."

Jareth sighed heavily and paced a little away from her before turning back. "I am bound by laws that are older than myself."

Sarah blinked and rocked back. She put her knees down and crossed her legs at the ankle, thinking. "But I—I am human," she said. "I am bound by no such laws."

"They are laws older than you too," he said dryly. "Older than your entire race."

"It doesn't matter, don't you see?" she said. "They are not my laws; not mortal, not human, not of my world, nothing whatever to do with me, and . . . and I have no power here, the Labyrinth does not get its power from me, and I do not get any power from it."

"But you get your power, what power you have, from me," Jareth said.

She thought about that. The Labyrinth got its power from Jareth, but that did not mean that Jareth got his power from it. She got her power from Jareth, but what was the connection between that and the Labyrinth? There really wasn't one that she could see. "Does that matter?" she asked. "If you created it, does that matter?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "Nothing like this has ever happened before. Years ago, when belief in the Aboveground was stronger, children were sent here all the time. Some of them were rescued, some were abandoned, and some were forgotten, but until now, until you, I have never honestly felt that badly about it. Certainly not to the extent that I considered for even an instant risking the maze for one of them."

Sarah got up and walked over to him. She placed a hand on his crossed arms and felt the tension under her hands that he had been trying to disguise by his stillness. "Let me try to help at least some of them," she said. "I am sorry to ask it, but I must ask it. Let me fix this if I can."

He took her in his arms and held her tightly against him. She came into his arms easily and willingly, without fear or hesitation. He still felt wonder that such a thing, with this woman, his Sarah who had haunted him for years, could be so simple. He rested his chin on top of her head for a moment, then took a deep breath, inhaling her scent of sweet violets and below that, the smell of soap and water, and let it out slowly.

"Alright. I'll let you go," he said. It wrenched at him to say it, even though he knew she was not leaving, not really. She was not going anywhere. She would venture into the Labyrinth to salvage what she could of a difficult situation, and only that because he could not do it himself. She would come back to him. She had to. He told himself these things, but he still could not escape the uneasy twinge that he got at the idea. "I'll let you go, on one condition."

"Bleeding Christ, Jareth," she said, but she was laughing. "What now?"

"Do not endanger yourself," he said. He moved back a bit to look her directly in the eye. "You are not exempt from the dangers of the maze, even with that little bauble around your neck. Promise me that you will not risk your life or safety for them. Promise me that if it comes down to a choice between them and you, you will be selfish and pick you."

"Jareth, I'm not—"

"Promise me, Sarah, please," he insisted. "And don't lie."

"Of course I promise," she said. She touched his face, laying the back of one hand against his cheek, almost a caress. "I will come back."

"I know that," he said. "Just come back to me without any parts missing."

She smiled because she knew he was only half joking. "I will."

"Good." He sighed and reluctantly stepped out of her arms. "And while you are doing that, I'm afraid I'm going to have to go Aboveground and find a way to fix this book problem, or else more children will keep coming."

"Don't you dare destroy my book," Sarah said. "I spent more than five years trying to get that fucking thing published. Don't you dare ruin it."

He laughed at that. "What possible difference could it make to you now? You're dead up there, and even if you wanted to, you can't get any money from it."

Sarah laughed right back at him and tossed her hair over her shoulder. "Do you think that's why I wrote it, to make money? Do you honestly think that's why any writer worth half a shit writes anything? I never put a single word on paper because I thought someone was going to pay me for it. Sure, I hoped to make a living at it one day, but only so I could do the thing I loved and not have to get up every morning to teach imbeciles."

"I thought you liked English, words, that sort of thing," Jareth said.

"I do. I love them, and that's why I'm not going to let you destroy my book."

He grinned at her. "Then you'll be pleased to know that I never had any intention of destroying your darling book. I'd have to be more of an imbecile myself than I like to think I am to throw away such a ready-made source of power. I am in this book of yours, I assume?"

"You know damn well you are." Sarah chuckled. She saw it now, how her story, a story about Jareth, the King of the Goblins and his fabulous maze of booby-traps, could get into the minds of impressionable and imaginative children and make them believe. How that much belief could make him extremely powerful in the Underground, where belief in other things was so short in supply. "You devious bastard," she said.

He smiled, then to her delight and amusement, he sketched her an elegant, if out-dated, bow over one bent leg. "Thank you, my lady. Such compliments . . . I hardly think I deserve them."

She went up to him, took the back of his head in one hand, and pulled him down to kiss. She caught his bottom lip between her teeth, tugged lightly, then stepped back. "Don't be modest, Jareth. It doesn't suit you."

His eyes were dancing with mischief and amusement. "I don't believe I've ever been told that before—and definitely not like that. Most people would suggest I give modesty a try. In fact, many have."

"Well, they don't know what they're talking about, do they?" Sarah said. "Nor do they know you that well, I would guess."

"Some of them do," he said. "That's precisely why they suggest it."

At that moment a little boy, a bit older than the others, two, maybe three at the outset, tugged on the hem of Sarah's shirt to get her attention. "Pee," he said.

Sarah gave Jareth a pleading look.

"I believe the child has to relieve himself," Jareth said, grinning in a way that particularly annoyed her for some reason. Maybe because he did not have a kid hanging onto his clothes asking him for permission to 'pee'.

"Since you are going Aboveground, you can pick me up a few things while your there," she said, leading the child by the hand to the nearest bathroom—another of one of her architectural additions, but one that Jareth had allowed to stay once he figured out what it was.

He followed her and waited patiently while she helped the little boy unfasten his zip-up pajamas.

"What could there possibly be up there that you cannot summon here by yourself?" he asked.

"Nothing," she said. "But for some reason, summoned cigarettes and Southern Comfort don't taste as good, or pack quite the whollop as the genuine article. I think it must have something to do with my sensory memories—which I admit are not always at their best after I've had a few."

Jareth agreed to get her cigarettes, and after she described exactly what it was and where he could find it, he agreed to bring her back a fifth of her favorite drink as well.

"You're being very agreeable," Sarah said, kneeling in front of the boy and helping him with his zipper.

"What makes you think I can't be agreeable?"

She shrugged and watched the little boy scurry off to play with his new friends and the goblins. "Nothing, I guess," she said, "except past experience and what my mother used to call 'women's intuition'. Based on that, I would say your capacity for being agreeable isn't very vast."

He snorted and slung a companionable arm around her waist. "What's it to me if you want to breathe smoke like a dragon and get falling down drunk? It's not so hard to be agreeable about something like that." He looked down at her and gave her a cocky wink. "Besides, I've never seen you drunk. It might be fun."

She smiled back at him. "I have it on very good authority that I am very fun when I am drunk. But just because I intend to drink does not necessarily mean I'm going to get drunk." Who was she kidding? She hadn't had a decent smoke or a decent drink in months. The second that bottle was in her hot little hand, she was drinking it, by God, every lovely drop. "But I probably will."

"I look forward to it," he said. He looked around at all the babies and goblins swinging, and running, and dancing, and jumping, and basically wreaking havoc everywhere and in every way they could. "Now what do you think we should we do about them?"

"Lock them in the dungeons," she said instantly.

As it turned out, that was actually a pretty good idea, the only feasible idea when it came to the goblins anyway. Jareth commanded them all into the underground dungeons, slammed the door behind them, locked it, and just for good measure, set wards on the door so that they could not pass the doorway, even if they somehow managed to get the door open.

The babies were another matter entirely. They couldn't very well lock a bunch of defenseless—breakable, don't forget, breakable—kids up in a dungeon with a pack of crazy goblins and expect to find them safe and sound when they returned to let them out. So to compromise, Jareth suggested they put them to sleep. Not like unwanted puppies, mind—that would kind of defeat the purpose—but with a spell, sort of like something from Sleeping Beauty. A state of suspended animation, where they would neither need to eat, drink—or shit, thank you Jesus—and from which they would wake when Jareth lifted it as gently as they would from an afternoon nap.

This was surprisingly easy. Sarah had envisioned some horrific game of tag while they tried to round up all the rambunctious little youngsters and send them one by one to Dream Land. What really happened was Jareth lifted his arms, said some strange, faintly Gaelic sounding words, then lowered them, and as he did, the children yawned, blinked, then curled up wherever they happened to be and began snoring and sucking their thumbs.

"Wow," Sarah said as they went around making the children comfortable with blankets and pillows. She fished one particularly adventurous child out of the toilet, cleaned him off, dried him, and tucked him in.

"You say that so often," Jareth commented.

She looked at him, remembering the last time he had made that observation about her. Her mantra at the time was 'it's not fair', and it certainly hadn't been, not any of it, but she had made peace with that a long time ago. "That's because 'wow' is often the only thing I have to say. At least about this place."

They finished getting the children to bed, then stood in the throne room, looking around at all of them.

"What happens if another one shows up while we're gone?" Sarah asked.

"Can't happen."

"What? Why not?"

"Because," he said patiently, "the goblins have to come and take them away. Don't you remember the words? You wrote them down for the entire world to read, or say, or sing to the rooftops, you should remember."

She chose to ignore that—pick your battles—and said, "What's to stop them?"

"They can't very well go popping off to steal babies if they're locked up tighter than a spinster's cooch, now can they?"

Sarah looked at him and laughed. "What the hell is a 'cooch'?"

He smiled. "I think you know very well what I meant."

"Well, if you're going to be crude, Jareth, you ought to do it right. Not pussy-foot around the fucking thing with silly substitute words like 'cooch'. Jesus."

"I haven't quite mastered the art of gutter language yet," he said. "But give me time enough and world enough—and more interesting conversations like this with you—and I'm sure I'll get the hang of it eventually."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "One can only hope." She studied him out of the corners of her eyes for a while, then turned to him. "Speaking of; please tell me you're not wearing that to the Aboveground."

He looked down at his clothes, black trousers tucked into knee-high leather boots, a simple tunic with a lace-up collar, and his ever-present gold amulet. "What is wrong with this?"

"Nothing, except up there you'll look like a gay glam rocker hopped up on crack." When he just looked puzzled at this, she attempted to translate. The best she could come up with was, "Jareth, you'll get your ass kicked."

That he understood. He also found it amusing. "I doubt that very much."

She shrugged. "Whatever. It's your funeral."

"If it will make you feel better—"

"Actually, it wouldn't," she said. "I find the idea of you in Levi's and Reeboks sort of disturbing. Like dressing up a pet poodle in a tutu. But then, I also find the idea of you with a broken nose that has to be reset before it heals magically fast and leaves you looking like a Picasso masterpiece faintly disturbing as well. A little funny, but disturbing."

It was obvious that the Goblin King had understood very little of this—Levi's, Reeboks, poodles, tutus, and Picasso all in one fell swoop was a little much—it would have been a little much for anybody with the kind of severe cultural divide that separated him from the human world—but he had gotten the basic idea. He did not change his clothes to go to the Aboveground, and as she watched him fly out the nearest window, Sarah decided he could probably take care of himself.


	23. 23

Jareth slipped his owl skin in a back alley, out of the sight of curious human eyes. Though belief was a very sought-after thing among the Fae, and he was obviously no exception, there were unspoken laws to Fae dealings in the human world. One of the most serious ones was that belief was never allowed to become solid, provable fact. If such a thing ever happened—and it had happened before—the transgressor was dealt with swiftly and violently.

Though Jareth was not terribly bothered by the possibility of becoming an outlaw in the Underground, he still would never have revealed himself so openly. He was a firm believer in the idea that belief, by its very nature, required some doubt for it to have any meaning at all. Not much doubt, just a little.

It was not often that the Goblin King ventured into the Aboveground if there was any way he could avoid it. He loved the lights, the noise, the way life moved fast and ruthless on the busy mortal streets, and the way things never seemed to stay the same for two minutes at a time, but what he could not abide was the sheer amount of cold iron that existed there. Everywhere he turned, it seemed there was something else that he had to take great care to avoid, and even close proximity to the metal for any length of time made him shivery and anxious.

He always wore gloves while he was there, but even so, did his best not to touch anything, even if he thought it was safe. Humans had recently taken to painting and dyeing every damned thing, even metal, so that what looked like a plastic device could actually be something much more dangerous. The absolute last thing he wanted was to be stranded in the Aboveground without his magic just because he happened to mistake one thing for another. He did not let himself take anything for granted. He couldn't afford to.

It had happened once before, long ago when he was young and careless, and it was not an experience he was likely ever to forget—and one he did not wish to repeat. His mother had come to his rescue that time. If it were to happen again, now, he doubted he would ever find a way to return home.

He emerged from the alley, turned a corner, and stopped at a newsstand, just like he belonged there. Which, considering it was Manhattan, was not as unbelievable as one might think.

Jareth picked up a newspaper—touching paper was still safe. As far as he knew, there were still trees, and miraculous as their technology was, humans had yet to start making it out of anything else. He noted the date—Monday, April 7, 1997—without much interest. The baby disappearances were front page news, though somewhat overshadowed by an article about something called Hale-Bopp Comet. He scanned this article, reading enough to understand that it was about a mad cult group that had all killed themselves—'mass suicide' and a 'tragedy' the paper called it. Jareth thought that really depended on who you asked. In his opinion, thirty-nine people who got it into their heads that death was somehow like a ride on a spaceship deserved exactly what happened to them, and hardly counted as a tragedy—then shifted his attention to the article about the 'kidnapped' babies. It wasn't very informative. But then, he hadn't expected that it would be. It did tell him what the humans knew about the situation—nothing whatsoever—but then it went off on bizarre conspiracy theories, and he turned the page.

There were more articles about arrested criminals; murderers, rapists, burglars, even an update on what seemed to be an on-going sensational case involving a man who had bombed a building and killed more than a hundred and sixty people. The cleverness and ingenuity of mortals never failed to amuse him. They were always coming up with new and more interesting ways to kill each other. And themselves.

He skipped the business and sports sections completely, paused when he came to a bunch of announcements about some famous people who had died that month and the latter part of the previous one. There was a multimillionaire, an author of children's books, a 'beat poet'—whatever that meant—and a man who had written, produced, directed, and been the co-creator of something called _Sesame Street_. They had all died well into adulthood, and probably comfortable in their beds, so Jareth didn't see what all the fuss was about. But then, one of the announcements could have been about the death of the Princess of Wales and he would have thought much the same way.

He closed the paper, folded it neatly, and under the curious and watchful eyes of the vendor, put it back on the stand and walked away.

The Princess of Wales actually would be dead in a little over four months. A car crash in Paris, and she would die with a pack of reporters clicking the shutters of their cameras as fast as they could move their fingers. But even had the Goblin King known this, it was doubtful that he would have cared.

It was near dark, but still daylight in the Aboveground, so Jareth had some time to kill. He had a plan for fixing this problem Sarah had gotten them both into, and it was a simple one, but to do it right, in a way that would cause the least chaos, he couldn't do it yet. He wasn't exactly planning to walk in the front door of the publishing house and ask to see the manuscript. This would probably result in him being laughed at, or carted off by whatever passed for guards in the modern world, or both. And break-ins, whether you were human or Fae, were best conducted at night.

So instead of getting his task over with and getting the merry hell out of the Aboveground as quickly as possible, as he would have liked to, he had to find something to do for the next hour or so until full dark.

Jareth went shopping.

He located a smoke-shop about a block away from the newsstand and spent nearly his whole hour wandering around. His first impression of the place was of a marketplace held inside a small perfumed room that was much too small for it. A marketplace that sold the strangest things, some of which he could not—and honestly, did not even attempt to—understand the use of. There were racks and boxes of little sticks covered in smelly stuff. It was these that caused the place to be so smoky and smell like the inside of a perfume bottle, as there were about ten of the little things burning on stands all around the room. There were t-shirts like the ones Sarah liked to wear, except that to the best of his recollection, she had never wore one with the witty declaration **I'M JUST A SOCIAL DRINKER, BUT I SMOKE CRACK LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER **emblazoned across the front of it in an agonizing color of puke purple.

He flicked through the t-shirts to see what else they had to say, and was told bluntly that **MEAN PEOPLE SUCK**, **MEAN PEOPLE NEED PROZAC**, and, as if there had ever been any doubt, **MEAN PEOPLE PRODUCE LITTLE MEAN PEOPLE**. Jareth had no idea what Prozac was, but he was pretty sure whoever had designed these things probably ate a lot of it. If they didn't, they should.

He moved down the isle reading the t-shirts, and actually enjoying himself without realizing it. He paused for a moment to consider a shirt decorated with the words **MY KARMA RAN OVER YOUR DOGMA** and wondered just what that was supposed to mean. 'Karma'? 'Dogma'? They sounded like the names of people. Or pets. Not names he would think anyone would want to be stuck with, or that he would ever wish on any poor unsuspecting creature, but what else could they be? And if that was the case, were they so common now in the Aboveground that it was just assumed everyone had a Karma or Dogma lurking in their family tree or hiding under their front porch?

On another rack he came across some with things like **JESUS LOVES YOU. EVERYONE ELSE THINKS YOU'RE AN ASSHOLE**, **JESUS IS COMING—AND BOY IS HE PISSED**, and **JESUS WOULD SLAP THE SHIT OUT OF YOU**. He naturally concluded that whoever this Jesus person was, he was not a nice guy.

There were more shirts, bumper-stickers, pins, magnets, lighters, and shot glasses throughout the store, and they dealt with everything from mental problems and religion to drugs and just plain silliness. Then on a rack in the very back he found two of these ridiculous garments that made him laugh out loud. He took them down and made his way toward the front counter.

There was a girl at the counter with pink spiked hair, a nose ring, and a tattoo of a cute little red devil with a pitchfork on her upper right arm. She was also wearing a t-shirt, and hers let him know that **ALL THE SANE PEOPLE QUIT HERE YEARS AGO**. Again, as if he had ever doubted it.

Jareth put his purchases down on the glass topped counter, then knelt to peer into the case below it at an artistic collection of pipes and bongs. They were very pretty. He especially liked the one that looked like a fire-breathing dragon.

The girl behind the counter popped her gum and lifted her eyebrows at the top of his head. "Ya want anything else?" she asked. The guy was weird, but she'd definitely seen weirder.

Jareth stood up and looked around at all the different cartons of cigarettes, the round tins of snuff, the baggies of pipe tobacco, packs of rolling papers, then back at the girl. "I need cigarettes," he said.

"Don't we all," the girl said. "What kind?"

He looked blank for a minute. What kind? He really didn't know. "I don't know," he said. "What kind do most people like?"

Okay, scratch that, he had just made a spectacular leap in weirdness. But she was a native New Yorker, she could handle it as long as he didn't pull out a big knife and start telling her about his 'voices'. "We got practically everything," she told him. "Pall Malls, Luckys, Marlboros, Mistys, Merits, Camels, Winstons, Kools, Dorals—we even got them little cigar things that taste like cherries, if ya want."

He stared at her, She popped her gum and waited for him to decide—or figure it out, 'cause that's what it really looked to her like he was trying to do.

"What would you pick?" Jareth honestly didn't give half a shit what she liked or thought, but he knew when he was out of his depth.

"Don't smoke," she said with a jerk of her shoulder.

"Oh." Well that was no help. "Marlboros then," he decided, picking the brand just because there seemed to be more advertisement posters and fliers on the walls than any other kind. And they were one of the few boxes that did not have an animal of some type as part of their insignia.

"Regulars or lights?" She thought it best to not bother him with menthols at all. She didn't want to see the guy blow a circuit.

"Regulars," he said doubtfully.

"One hundreds?"

"Uh, yes?"

She reached behind her, snagged a box, and put them down on the counter. "That it?"

"Yes," he said. He sounded relieved.

She punched in the prices for the shirts and scanned the carton of cigarettes. "Forty-five, eighty-nine," she said.

Jareth took a small leather draw-string purse from his belt and picked out two gold coins and a ruby the size of the tip of his thumb.

The girl's mouth dropped open and her gum plopped out on the glass counter-top.

He looked between her and the purchases, considered, and added a small silver coin to the rest. "Is that not enough?"

"Are ya kidding me, man? Ya can't fucking pay with that."

"I assure you it's real."

"But ya can't pay for cigarettes with that kind of shit. What the hell's wrong with you?"

Jareth folded his arms over his chest and glared down at the girl in his most superior way.

She stared back at him, undaunted by the gleam in his eye or the set of his shoulders. She'd spent her early childhood scrapping with the neighborhood kids and dodging the cops, she wasn't afraid of some wack-job that looked like a traveling Renaissance Fair reject.

"Since when is gold no longer an acceptable form of currency?" he demanded.

"Since maybe the fifties," she said. "That's the nineteen-fifties, Shakespeare."

"Well this is all I have," Jareth said.

She studied him intently for almost a full minute, then sighed and scooped up the coins and the ruby. "Look, you seem like a sane enough guy. You could do with a hair cut and some new threads, but still—"

"Bite it," he told her.

She glared at him. "Listen, you crazy fuck, I don't have to take that kind of—"

"The coin," Jareth said with what he considered to be infinite patience. "Bite the edge of the coin."

She continued to glare at him, but did what he suggested and clamped her teeth down on the gold like an old miner in a spaghetti-western. When she took it out of her mouth and looked at it, sure enough, there were little indentations left by her teeth.

The look on her face was enough to give him permission to take his purchases and walk out of the store, which he did. He stood on the sidewalk and took a deep breath. The perfumed atmosphere of the smoke-shop had left him a little light-headed. He folded the material of the t-shirts around the box of cigarettes, then just kept folding until he had a small little package no bigger than a domino, which he put in his leather purse for safe-keeping.

The next store he visited was similar to the first, except there was no smoke or perfume, and it was a lot brighter than the smoke-shop. He did not spend much time walking around looking at the bottles. If you've seen one bottle of wine, you've pretty much seen them all. He did pick up a bottle of some violently green liquid and swish it around experimentally, but then he went straight to the counter and asked for Sarah's Southern Comfort. When he paid the man with gold, this time Jareth did not have to prompt the grizzled old man to test it with his teeth. He did it without being asked, and when he found it to be real, he considerately wrapped up Jareth's bottle in a paper sack, and even gave him a toothy smile as he was leaving.

The only way Jareth knew to explain it was the changing of time. Time passed, that was one of the things that was unavoidable no matter which world you lived in. And the old man at the liquor store evidently came from a time when gold was a perfectly acceptable currency—even a preferred one.

The sun had long set and it was now full dark. Time for him to find Sarah's manuscript and get his real work over with so he could go home. He'd already been wandering through streets dappled and bristling with a thousand different forms of cold iron for long enough to make his damned teeth itch.


	24. 24

Sarah stood in the gloom as the sun rose behind the Castle, casting dancing, flitting shadows along the towers, and over the many twisting walls of the Labyrinth. She had successfully helped twelve of the mothers and fathers to reach the Castle and retrieve their children. She should have felt proud of such an accomplishment, because not even those twelve would have made it without her. But she couldn't help thinking of the ones she had lost.

Thirteen hours, and no more, was all the time they and she hand been granted. That too, was an unbreakable law of the maze, and she had not broken it. But in order to get any of them safely to their destination, she had had to leave some—those less capable, and less able to adapt—behind. And there was always, in the back of her mind, the promise that Jareth had obtained from her before they set out on their separate quests. _Promise me that if it comes down to a choice between them and you, you will be selfish and pick you._ And she had, more than once, been forced to choose. She had left a man, searching for his twin daughters, behind in the forest, surrounded by malicious, capering Fireies. She had lost a woman somewhere after they left the Bog. She had not wanted to leave them behind, but she had. She had thought of going back for them several times, but she had not.

In the end, she had been selfish. She had lost and abandoned more than ten men and women, all striving to save their young daughters and sons from the Castle Beyond the Goblin City. And now that it was done, did she regret it? No. She regretted only that she was unable to regret it. She regretted that, faced with the same decisions, her choices would not have been different.

She turned her eyes back to the Castle towers, reaching for the sky like the pillars of some great, dead Roman city. "Hello, Jareth," she said when the white owl lit on the wall beside her. "Everything went well with you, then?"

Jareth became a man in a flurry of false-wind and glitter. "Yes," he said. "I merely switched a few words around, got rid of a few others. The story is the same, but there is no summoning magic in it anymore."

"Good," Sarah said.

They stood together in silence for a while, listening to the faint chirrup of birds awakening with the dawn, and the little sounds of morning that arose everywhere as the first rays of sunlight touched the ground and spread to every corner of the Labyrinth. If Sarah had doubted before that the maze lived, she did not doubt it anymore.

"Sarah, what—?"

"'I am a guide to the Labyrinth," Sarah murmured in what Jareth had come to recognize as her 'quoting' voice. "'Monarch of the protean towers/ on this cool stone patio/ above the iron mist/ sunk in its own waste/ breathing its own breath'."

"Yeats?" Jareth asked.

She smiled sadly. "No. Jim Morrison. He was a musician," she clarified at the puzzled look Jareth gave her.

Her melancholy tone made him wonder, so he asked, "Someone you knew?"

She laughed. "No. He was dead before I was born. I never even saw him in concert." She smiled and reached out to clasp his hand in hers. "I'm not sure I would have wanted to anyway. He had this fascination with human behavior and liked nothing better than to incite his audience to violence and . . . well, the concerts often ended in orgies, or so they say."

"Why were you thinking about him then?"

She sighed. "I wasn't exactly thinking about him. His words seemed to fit the moment, that's all."

"I take it your mission was not as successful as mine," he said.

"I only got twelve of them to the Castle. I lost—I don't know how many."

"Twelve?" He lifted a brow at her. "That many?"

"I lost almost the same number," she said.

"But twelve . . . I'm impressed."

"Don't be." She lifted his hand to her mouth and pressed her lips to the back of his knuckles, taking comfort from his presence, and the intimacy that came with her ability to do that whenever she felt like it. "Jareth?"

"Hmm?"

"I could really use a cigarette right now." That wasn't the only thing she thought she could really use at the moment, but she thought it best to pace herself a little. Distantly, she knew that what she was feeling was some minor form of shock, and though she was seriously tempted to shove Jareth up against the nearest wall and jump his bones, she contented herself with the pack of Marlboros he passed to her.

"I hope those are what you wanted," he said.

She grunted and lit the tip with a snap of her fingers. Marlboros weren't her favorite, but they were better than the bland tasting smokes she had thus far managed to summon, and they were certainly better than nothing.

She cast Jareth a speculative glance and inhaled deeply, savoring the first rush of nicotine to her system. She exhaled and watched him with mild amusement. He was fidgeting.

"What's up with you? You're practically dancing in place."

"I . . . well, I brought you something else."

For the first time, she noticed what he was wearing and after she had convinced herself that, no, she was not hallucinating, she laughed. "Jareth, what the hell is that?"

He was wearing a black t-shirt with the words **HELP! I THINK I'M A ROCK-STAR!** across the front of it in glittering pink letters.

He grinned at her reaction, glad that he had not been wrong about it. "I thought you might think it was funny."

She snorted. "Yes, and it's very appropriate."

"I got one for you too."

Her eyes widened. "What the hell were you doing up there?" For the life of her, she could not visualize the Goblin King going shopping for novelty t-shirts. It was just too damned weird. "What's mine say? **HELP! I'VE BEEN KIDNAPPED BY GOBLINS**?"

"Don't be absurd."

"No, wouldn't want that, would we?" She said sarcastically. The whole fucking situation was absurd in her opinion. She finished the first cigarette and used it to light another one before she crushed it out beneath the toe of her shoe. "Well? Let's have it then."

Jareth removed the second t-shirt from his little leather pouch and shook it out. It read **I LIKE POETRY, LONG WALKS ON THE BEACH, & POKING DEAD THINGS WITH A STICK.**

Sarah couldn't help it; she coughed on the smoke in her lungs, then sat down against the wall and laughed. He certainly had her pegged, she had to give him that.

"Do you like it?" He asked.

"I love it," she said. "I swear. Thanks. Now, about that bottle you were supposed to get me . . ."

"I have it here," he assured her, and passed it to her.

"Thank God," she said with feeling. "I could really use a drink right now." She took the bottle from him, opened it, and took a long deep swig. She swallowed and put the cap back on. "So what happens to the kids I didn't save?"

Jareth looked at her sharply. "Don't blame yourself for that, Sarah. You sent more of them home than would have ever made it without you."

"But not all of them," she said.

"No. Not all of them."

"So what happens to the ones that are still in the Castle when we get back?"

"I think you already know the answer to that question," he said, not unkindly.

"They turn into goblins," she said, her voice flat.

"Yes."

She took a shuddering breath and pressed her hand to her forehead, where a monster of a headache was brewing. "Jareth?"

"Yes, Sarah?"

"Take me home."

"Are you tired?" he asked. He could definitely understand it if she was.

"No." She smiled faintly. "Are you?"


	25. 25

They may not have been tired when they returned to the Castle, or even for several long, sweaty, pleasurable hours after that, but neither of them had slept much in the past two days, and exhaustion was starting to wear on them both.

After one disorienting and strange, albeit exciting, hour spent making love in the Escher Room, not entirely sure if she was on her back on the floor, pressed against the wall, or stuck to the ceiling, Sarah demanded they go to bed—for the purpose of sleep—and Jareth happily agreed.

They fell into bed roughly around midday—Jareth's bed this time—and slept wrapped around each other as though dead.

Sarah awoke suddenly several hours later to a loud insistent tapping sound. She lifted her head from Jareth's chest, glanced around blearily in the dark, then let it fall back. She was almost asleep again when the sound came again.

"What!" she barked irritably in the direction of the door. Jareth tensed beside her and she knew that she had woke him up. "Midge, what is it now?"

There was no answer.

"What the devil are you yelling about?" Jareth groaned.

"Someone knocked on the door," she told him.

"Well, tell them to go away."

She glared down at him—or she would have if it hadn't been so dark she couldn't even see him. "What do you think I was just doing?"

"I did not hear you tell anyone to go away," he said. "I distinctly heard you ask them what they wanted."

Grumbling to herself, Sarah got out of bed, pulled on her robe, and fastened it with an angry jerk before opening the door. There wasn't anyone there. She stepped out into the hall and looked around, but the corridor was empty in both directions. A portrait of a frizzy-haired woman with a raccoon in her lap watched her with bored disinterest. Sarah paused in the doorway on her way back into Jareth's bedchambers just long enough to flip her off.

"Well, I never," the frizzy-haired woman huffed.

"With hair like that, I bet not," Sarah muttered, then slammed the door.

"What did he want?" Jareth asked, his voice was muffled by the pillow he had covered his face with when she opened the door.

"He?"

"Midge."

"There was no one there." She took her robe off and threw it over the bed-post.

Jareth grunted and edged over a little when she dropped heavily back on the bed. "Then who knocked?"

"Don't know," she said. "Probably just a couple of goblins nigger-knocking."

"What?"

"Means they knock on the door and real quick run off before you get there and—well, basically what just happened."

"Oh."

There was another loud tapping sound. Sarah growled into Jareth's chest.

"Go away!"

_Tap, Tap, Tappity-Tap._

"Oh, Jesus fucking Christ," she grumbled. Jareth took the pillow off of his face and laughed. "Shut up," she told him.

He snorted. "It's not the door," he said.

"What? The hell it isn't, and when I catch the little monster that's doing it, so help me—"

"Put your robe back on, we have company," he told her. He lit the candle on the bedside table and pointed to the full-length mirror at the foot of the bed.

Sarah crossed her arms over her breasts with an alarmed squeak. There in the mirror were King Raspiel and Queen Elipsabet, both looking cool and mildly amused.

Sarah snatched her robe from the bed-post and put it on, clutching the front of it together tightly. "Why didn't you tell me your mirror did that?" she hissed at Jareth.

He put a finger against her lips to shush her, then reclined against the head-board and flipped the edge of a sheet over his lap. "Good evening King Raspiel, Lady Elipsabet."

"Good evening," Raspiel said, his odd lavender eyes darting between them. "Are we interrupting anything, by chance?"

Sarah grumbled something under her breath that Jareth didn't quite catch. However, he did discern the words 'sleep' and 'wanker', and so could not really be blamed for the grin that suddenly appeared on his face.

"Nothing of any consequence, I assure you," he said politely.

Sarah caught Raspiel looking her over with curiosity that was barely shy of suggestive and glared at him wrathfully. Her forward manner seemed to unnerve him and he turned his attention back to Jareth.

"My lady and I wished to speak with you about your invitation," he said.

Jareth lifted a brow and gave the king a cold look. "Yes?"

"It is still open, I assume?"

"You assume correctly."

"Oh, Jesus," Sarah muttered and rolled her eyes. She looked longingly at her place on the bed, where she would be soundly sleeping that very moment if Raspiel and Jareth had settled their shit at the stupid masquerade ball.

"Are there any specific times that you would find preferable?" Raspiel asked. His wife had not said a word, just sat there looking acutely bored with the whole thing.

"Yeah," Sarah said, cutting off whatever response Jareth had been about to make. "How about any time that's not now?"

Raspiel looked at her and curled his lip disdainfully.

Sarah almost laughed. Oh please, she'd been snarled at by ritually scarred gang members that she knew for a dead certainty kept sharp objects hidden in their lockers and were not afraid to use them. This guy had a lot of work to do before he could scare her with a look.

"You want to come for a little visit, right?" she asked.

"That would be correct," Raspiel said cautiously.

Sarah looked at Jareth. "What about you?"

He regarded her with his brows lifted and a small smile curling his lips. "What about me? You seem to be handling things well enough without me."

"I meant, do you have a problem with that?"

"No," he said. "I extended the invitation after all. It's only fair that—"

"Fine," she cut him off. "When?"

"Whenever is convenient for them is fine."

Sarah looked at the king inside the mirror. "When?"

"Well, we were thinking perhaps tomorrow if there are no objections. But—"

"Fine. Tomorrow." Sarah deliberately took the blanket from the foot of the bed and tossed it over the mirror, blocking them out. "See you then."

"Did you have to do that?" Jareth asked when she climbed back on the bed.

"No, I didn't _have_ to," she said. She yawned and curled up on her side with her head on his belly. "But think of how much damned time I just saved us both."

"It wasn't very polite."

"Politeness is overrated."

He didn't have anything to say to that, and he was just as tired as she was, and he didn't really give a damn if she had just insulted the Unseelie monarch or not, so he slid back down on the bed, yawned, and closed his eyes.

"Jareth?"

"Hmm?"

"Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Sarah."


	26. 26

Early the next morning they received another messenger within the mirror. This time however, both Sarah and Jareth were wide awake and fully clothed, and this visitor was much more welcome than the last ones.

"Hoggle!"

The dwarfish little man's already buggy blue eyes widened in surprise. "Sarah? What you doin' there—er here, I mean?"

"Jareth brought me," she said. She finished braiding her hair and tossed the long plait over her shoulder. "How have you been? I haven't seen you in . . . well, years."

Hoggle waved that away. "What d' you mean, Jareth brought you? Did he kidnap you? He did, didn't he?"

"No, of course not," Sarah said. She crossed her legs and folded her hands on top of them.

Hoggle eyed her doubtfully. "Then watcha wearin' a dress for?" he asked shrewdly. "And why are you sittin' on his bed, in his rooms?"

"Hoghead!" Jareth said. He came into the room and beamed at Hoggle.

"Hoggle!" Hoggle said angrily.

"Yes, quite." Jareth smirked.

"Do you have to do that?" Sarah asked. "You know damn well what his name is. You're just doing it because you know it annoys him. Must you?"

"Whenever the opportunity presents itself," Jareth said.

She sighed. "I am often surprised by how childish you can be."

"And I am often surprised by how often you are surprised by that," Jareth said, grinning.

Sarah shook her head, but she was smiling. "Hoggle was wondering why I am wearing a dress—oh, and he also wanted to know why I am in your rooms, sitting on your bed. Why don't you tell him, Jareth?"

Jareth gave her a long hot look. She was wearing a simple burgundy dress with a gold fleur-de-lis pattern over a white chemise with long billowing sleeves, it was completely modest, almost too modest for her taste, but that look made her feel decadently naked. She flushed and looked down at her hands in her lap.

"Well, as you are an adult and fully capable of dressing yourself in whatever you choose, I suppose the only reason why you would be caught dead in something like that is because we are expecting guests," Jareth said, speaking more to her than to Hoggle. "And as for why you are in my rooms, in my bed . . ."

Sarah tensed and snuck a look at Hoggle, who had gone paper white and looked like he was about to have a fit.

Jareth chuckled. "I don't really think that's any of his business," he said. "But then again, it appears Hoggle has already pretty much figured it out, don't you think?"

"Yes," she said faintly. He didn't look too happy about it either. He gave her a look that was half way between angry betrayal and injured puppy.

"Now, about our guests, Hogbrain," Jareth said, turning to face the mirror. "I presume they have arrived?"

"Yes, your majesty," Hoggle said, still looking between Jareth and Sarah as though he suspected he might be going a little mad. "They just got here. What do you want me to do?"

"Let them in, of course," Jareth said.

"Er—the normal way, your majesty?"

"Don't be stupid. That would take them hours, and as much as I despise the whole thing, the quicker they get here the quicker I can be rid of them."

"So I should, er—I should let them fly in?"

Jareth turned away from the mirror like he couldn't stand to look at the ugly little man for another moment. "Yes, yes, lift the spell. But only for a minute. Only long enough for them to get here, then close it again."

"As you wish," Hoggle said with a bow, then the mirror cleared and he was gone.

"What spell?" Sarah asked, standing in front of the mirror and staring at her own reflection.

"Not a spell really, so much as a ward," Jareth said vaguely.

She looked at him over her shoulder. He was sitting in her place on the bed, leaned back on his elbows, watching her. She strongly suspected that the moment before she looked at him, he had been checking out her ass.

"A ward against what?" she asked.

"Unwelcome creatures entering the City by air," he said.

"What about birds and insects?"

He shrugged. "I like birds and most insects, so they're not unwelcome."

"Oh." She turned around, folded her arms under her breasts, and met his eyes. "So how long do we have before they get here?"

He lifted a brow and grinned wickedly. "Not nearly long enough. In fact, I believe they may already be waiting for us in the entryway."

She huffed out an annoyed breath. "Well, here we go again," she said. "I am really glad I took those acting classes in high school."

"Why?"

"Because I'm probably going to need them."


	27. 27

Before they even reached the bottom of the stairs, they were alerted to trouble by the sounds of chattering and agitated goblins, something that sounded like a whimpering dog, and the loud, angry yowls of a cat.

Sarah cast Jareth a sardonic look. "What's that phrase you can only say in French? Déjà vu?"

"I have no idea," he said. "It sounds like your cat is killing something."

"Or somebody," she said, her voice bright and hopeful.

"Or somebody," he agreed. "If that is the case, we should probably rescue them."

She sighed and took his hand as they descended the last of the stairs. "If we must."

King Raspiel and Queen Elipsabet were no longer waiting for them in the entryway. They had taken it upon themselves to enter the throne room and had made themselves quite at home by the time Jareth and Sarah paused on the landing to take in the situation.

The king had brought his beloved dog with him—though God alone knew how they had managed to get him there—and said dog—a two-headed dog, no less—had cornered Shire, and Raspiel and Jonas were heckling the dog while the frightened and overexcited goblins looked on.

"What the fuck is going on here?" Sarah snapped. Her character of Sarah the Seelie Sidhe was completely forgotten in her outrage.

Raspiel straightened from his crouching position behind the two-headed dog. "My dog Fen seems to have discovered a very odd looking vermin living in your Castle, Jareth."

"Vermin," Sarah said indignantly. Shire was a pure-blood blue-point Siamese, it would be difficult to find an animal less qualified to be called 'vermin'. "I'll have you know that cat is worth more than your entire God-fucking kingdom," she said. "And if you don't call that dog off right now—"

"Peace," Jareth said, placing a restraining hand on her shoulder before she could finish the threat. "Call off your dog, Raspiel," he said. When the king just shifted his eyes thoughtfully between him and Sarah, he said, more sharply, "Now."

Raspiel snapped his fingers and said a foreign word, and the hideous beast immediately obeyed his command and went to heal. "My apologies, Jareth, I had no idea the creature was . . . welcome," he said.

"Raspiel," Jareth said patiently, "I think you will find that no one and no thing enters my Castle unless they are welcome."

Sarah went and gathered Shire into her arms. She was petting him and murmuring to him to calm his shivering when Elipsabet suddenly laughed. It was a high pitched sound, and so abrupt that Shire instinctively set his claws into her arm.

"So that is a cat," Elipsabet said. "How extraordinary. How very . . . exotic."

Sarah caught the boy Jonas watching her with his intense mismatched eyes and glared. "Yes, isn't it just," she said sarcastically. Very gently she removed the cat's claws from her skin. "You will keep that . . . animal of yours on a leash while it is here," she said to Raspiel.

"Does your lady always speak for you, Jareth?" Raspiel asked. He was really getting on Sarah's nerves, and from the smirk on Jareth's face, she was sure he knew it.

"No, but she has this annoying habit of speaking for herself, you see," Jareth said, and watched Sarah's eyes narrow. "I really don't see how I'm going to break her of it."

Now that was definitely the kind of thing that interested Raspiel, she could see that right away. Something bound to get the Fae into a deep and involved conversation about things Sarah would rather not hear or think about, thank you very much.

"Well, it's all a matter of determination and willpower," Raspiel said. "It's rather like breaking a human, you know. We had a little trouble breaking Jonas here of some very nasty habits, but looking back it was really very satisfying. I'm sure a woman is not that much different."

"I'm sure," Jareth said. He gave every appearance of rapt interest in the topic, but Sarah could tell from the set of his shoulders and the way his gaze kept darting to her that he was fast coming to the same realization that she had. That he had just opened the proverbial Pandora's Box with his little off-hand comment.

Serves him right, she thought, and went to offer Elipsabet a chair and something to drink. As she was going to the kitchen to make the queen a coffee with cream, she happened to remember Jonas.

"Do you want anything?" she asked him.

He was shuffling and twitching in a way that made her think that whatever he may have been on in the Aboveground, and however long he may have been in the Underground, he was not clean even now. He was still on something, or that twitching would have gone away. It was what her boyfriend, Henry Cain, used to call the 'sweet junk jitters'. Junkies got like that when they hadn't had their fix recently, but it eventually went away if they stayed off the drugs.

"Not unless you got a Coke or somethin' back there, man," he said. He crossed his arms and scratched nervously. "Or maybe a beer."

"Uh, sorry, I don't think we have any soda," she said. "But we might have some beer. Something out of a keg, you understand, but still—"

"Nah, forget it," he said. "I don't need nothin'."

"Alright," she said, and left them all together to talk about politics, the weather, 'breaking' people, and whatever other fascinating things the Sidhe discussed when they were thrown together.

"Perrin, take Shire somewhere, will you?" she asked the little goblin when he followed her into the kitchen. "Keep him away from that damned dog."

"Yes," he said, and took the cat from her. "Okay. Stay away from nasty doggie," he admonished the cat, who merely blinked at him and held onto his shirtsleeve as he carried him from the room.

"Fuck and bugger," Sarah muttered and leaned against the countertop. The day was certainly off to an interesting start.

She reentered the throne room a few minutes later with coffee and cream on a tray and suggested they all go into the dining hall and wait for the scones she had baking. Of course, she had no scones baking, as she could not bake. She was, however, becoming very skilled with her wand and wasted no time summoning a great warm pile of the things, which she set between them before taking her seat beside Jareth.

"Your lady is a wonderful cook," Raspiel commented after his first bite of an orange and cranberry scone.

"Not wonderful enough for him to address me personally though," Sarah whispered to Jareth, who grinned and passed her a lemon poppy-seed scone.

Elipsabet poured cream into her coffee then took small leather packet from a fold of her cloak and added teaspoon of a strange glittery powder to it before stirring and taking a sip. She closed her eyes in an expression of near-bliss then opened them to see Sarah staring at her.

"I'm sorry, would you like some?" she offered Sarah the packet.

Sarah reached out to take it, but Jareth pushed the queen's hand away. "No."

"But—"

"No, Sarah, you don't want that," he said.

Elipsabet smiled benignly and put it away. "I am sorry again," she said with a twittering laugh. "I only thought to be polite."

"Thank you," Jareth said. "But it is politeness of a kind we can very well do without."

Raspiel laughed and brushed sugar glaze from his fingertips. "Come now, Jareth. Do not tell me you have never tried it before."

Jareth eyed him distastefully. "I have. But that was long ago. And I had my reasons."

"Yes, and don't we all?"

"I wasn't going to eat the stuff," Sarah told him under her breath. "I just wanted to see what it was."

He bent his head toward her. "Pixy Dust," he murmured.

"Oh."

"It is like some of your Aboveground drugs," he explained. "Very addictive. And destructive."

Sarah shot a glance at Jonas, who was eyeing the queen's coffee avariciously. Well, she supposed now she knew what was giving him the jitters.

"Thanks," she said to Jareth, and she meant it. She had seen what drugs could do to a person, and she had no desire whatsoever to experience it first-hand. Watching it happen to someone she loved had been bad enough.

"In future," Jareth whispered, "don't take anything that someone you don't trust offers you, alright."

"Anything?" she asked.

"Anything," he confirmed.

"Okay, sure," she said. She held up a scone between them. "You want a scone?"

He grimaced. "No, thank you."

"I didn't bake them," she promised.

He eyed the pastry warily.

"The goblins didn't bake them either," she said, and watched his mouth curve into an amused smile.

He took the scone and bit off one corner.

"So when do you suppose we can give them the boot?" She asked, sipping her coffee. Black, by God, none of that cream and sugar crap. "For courtesy's sake, I mean."

He sighed and watched their guests as they finished their breakfast, all the time talking about people he did not know or remember, and things that had happened recently. Not for the first time, he wondered what they were doing there. Why had Raspiel insisted on visiting? Why would a man that considered him his enemy want to pay him a house-call? It made no sense.

"I don't know," he said. "Probably sometime after supper."

Sarah groaned. "Well at least we don't have to wait through eight damned courses."

"We don't?"

"Hell no," she said. "I ran out of ideas around the fifth course. That is, unless you think they might enjoy goblin flambé, or something like that. Chirst knows, with the shit they served us at that banquet, they'd probably eat it and ask for seconds."

Jareth snorted and covered his laughter with a cough.

"So, Jareth," Raspiel said, putting an end to their private conversation, "What manner of entertainment do you have planned for us today?"

"Entertainment?" Jareth and Sarah exchanged a look. Now they wanted to be entertained. This just got better and better.

"Oh, I would just love a tour of the Castle," Elipsabet exclaimed.

Jareth seized on that idea. "Why don't we give you a tour then, when you are finished with your breakfast?"

"Well, I'm finished now, what about you, darling?" she asked her husband.

"Yes, fine," he said curtly, and they both got to their feet.

As they were leaving the dining hall, Sarah noticed Jonas had fallen behind. She turned to see where he was and watched him pick up the queen's half empty china cup and drain it in one greedy swallow. She hastily looked away and let Jareth take her hand as they ushered their guests out.

Touring the Castle Beyond the Goblin City took them most of the day. Not so much the tour itself, as keeping a close eye on them and putting things to rights when they touched anything or knocked anything over or, in one amusing instance, released anything from it's crystal box prison.

"I can't believe how much magic is in this place," Elipsabet said. She was brushing will-o-wisp dust from her golden blonde hair. "It's really amazing, don't you think darling?"

"Amazing," Raspiel agreed. The dog, Fen, followed obediently at his heels, and behind them all, at a distance of about eight feet, Jonas followed them all. "Truly amazing."

"But where are your rooms, dear?" she asked Sarah.

Sarah froze under that expectant blue gaze. "Oh, well, they're on the other side of the castle."

"Oh really?" Elipsabet nibbled her bottom lip, looking between her and Jareth with a confused expression. "But that's not where you came down from this morning."

_Nosy bitch_, Sarah thought, but she kept a smile on her face and just said, "I was discussing something with Jareth this morning before you arrived."

"Oh," she said. "Then you do not share rooms. How odd. I thought you were close."

Jareth squeezed her hand reassuringly, but it didn't help. "That's really none of your business," Sarah said coolly.

The Unseelie queen's eyes widened and she clasped her hands together. "I'm so sorry. You're right, it isn't any of my business."

"I apologize for my lady," Raspiel said, but as always, he addressed his comments to Jareth.

Jareth shrugged. "She has already apologized for herself," he said. "Shall we continue?"

They toured the library, the Escher room, and every room in between, except for Sarah and Jareth's personal chambers. Jareth even led them down into the dungeons, which now, besides being dank, dark and creepy, also smelled strongly of goblin droppings. Sarah was almost positive that he had taken them down there more for his own personal amusement than because he honestly thought they had any wish to see it.

Around dusk, Sarah and Jareth took them once again to the dining hall, where the first course was already set out for them. Soup, simple chicken noodle, with homemade egg noodles and large pieces of vegetables and chicken in small crockery bowls. There were also baskets of warm bread and little jars of butter placed in the center of the table. Sarah had kept it in the kitchen and bribed the goblins to warm everything up and place it on the table.

Of course, when bribery hadn't worked, she had resorted to threats, but only as a last resort.

It amused her that Raspiel and Elipsabet did not seem to be enjoying their meal. Jonas, however, had two helpings and half a basket of bread all to himself. Living at the Unseelie Court had not entirely agreed with him, it would seem.

The second course was salad, with little bottles of different kinds of dressing for them to choose from. Sarah used the Italian, and Jareth did too after tasting a few of the others. The king and queen tried it, then pushed their lettuce around on their plates until the next course.

Next, there was pot-roast, seasoned with thyme and garlic and served with carrots, potatoes, and little onions. Jonas leapt on this joyfully and ate until Sarah feared he would pop like a bloated tick.

When Elipsabet and Raspiel did not seem to enjoy this either, Sarah finally asked them about it.

"Well, it's terribly bland, dear," Elipsabet said apologetically.

"'S great," Jonas told her. He swallowed the last of his roast and burped.

The fourth course was, of course, dessert. There were two kinds of pudding to choose from, four pies, and six different kinds of cakes. Sarah had also made sure to get oranges for Jareth because he liked them so much, and he was not all that fond of sweets. For the first time since they had sat down to eat, the king and queen seemed to enjoy their food though. Elipsabet ate two slices of raspberry crème cheesecake, a slice of banana cream pie, and two éclairs. Raspiel had basically the same thing, though heavy on the chocolate.

Sarah shared an orange with Jareth and wondered why both of them weren't the size of blimps.

The final course was actually just sherbet, to cleans the palate.

"What is that?" Elipsabet eyed the colored things in the dishes curiously.

"Sherbet," Sarah said.

"Oh. What is sherbet?"

Sarah shrugged and took a spoonful of lemon. It melted, and with it, took away the aftertaste of pot-roast and onions. "Try it."

They each tried some of a different color, and Sarah and Jareth both laughed at the shocked expressions on their faces.

"It's cold!" Raspiel exclaimed. "How did you do that?"

It did not escape her that this was one of the few times since she had met him that the king had addressed her directly. "It's frozen."

"Frozen," he said. "How very extraordinary."

Of course, Jonas did not think it was extraordinary, but he was once again watching her with an intense, almost searching expression on his face. As though she were a puzzle he was trying to solve. A puzzle with pieces that did not quite fit.

She smiled at him in an impersonal way and went to get the goblins to help her clear things up. This time, when she promised them that they could all share the leftovers, they did not argue with her at all, and went straight to work clearing the table and washing the dishes.

When Sarah returned to the dining hall, she noticed how Raspiel's purple eyes followed her, and from the blank look on Jareth's face, he noticed it too. She didn't let it bother her. After all, Jareth had had her in every imaginable position, upon every horizontal surface in the Castle—and even some of the vertical ones—so if this man thought he could embarrass her with a suggestive look, he had another thing coming.

When they finally escorted them to the entranceway, and bid them farewell, it was with relief and a sense of gladness at seeing the backs of them. Them and their pet human and their ugly two-headed dog.

"I fell dirty," Sarah told Jareth. "I'm going to take a bath and go to bed."

"I'll join you there shortly, then," Jareth said, heading toward his own chambers. "But first I have to speak to Hoggle and have him lift the ward for them again."

Sarah smiled at him and went over to give him a kiss before she started up the tower stairs to her own rooms. "I'll see you soon then," she said. "Don't be too long."


	28. 28

It's funny, Jareth would later think, how you never know when it's the last time. The last kiss, the last touch, the last sweet words from your lover's lips. You never know. You don't know when it happens that you will never taste their lips again, never feel their arms enfold you, their fingers caress you, their voice speak your name. There are always more times ahead, more chances to touch and speak and kiss. And so maybe you rush it, just once, because you have something else to do, and after all, it can wait. But what if it can't? What if that one time that you hurry away to do something else, is the last chance you will ever have?

Jareth never spoke to Hoggle. He didn't even make it to his rooms.

At the top of the stairs, he turned in that direction, then went still at the cold touch of an iron blade pressed to his throat. All of his magic drained out of him at that one simple touch, and in that instant, he was as mortal as any Aboveground mortal man walking in his Aboveground mortal world on his Aboveground mortal streets.

"That's right, fairy-man," a familiar voice hissed in his ear. "Cold iron. You know what that means doncha?"

"What do you think you're doing?" Jareth demanded, keeping his voice carefully low so that his throat wouldn't press any deeper against the blade.

"We know exactly what we are doing, Goblin King," Raspiel said, stepping from the shadows. "And now, before we go, I want you to write something for me. A letter for your lovely woman."

"What kind of letter?" Jareth growled.

"Whatever kind he wants," Jonas hissed, pressing the blade a little harder, so that a trickle of blood ran down Jareth's throat. "Understand?"

Jareth hissed at the sharp pain. "Yes."

"Good," Raspiel said. "Now that we understand each other, how about that letter?"

"She'll come after me," Jareth told him, suddenly sure that this was true. "It doesn't matter what you make me write, she'll come."

"That's why you're going to write it," Raspiel said. "No dictation."

"What am I supposed to write?"

"Think of something. Something that will make her not want to come after you."

Jareth thought quickly, then sighed and tried to push Jonas' hand away. The boy's grip tightened and Jareth had to go up on his toes to keep from having his throat slit.

"Oh no, the knife stays," Raspiel said. "I wouldn't want you to suddenly get your strength back and try something foolish."

"You got ink and paper?" Jareth asked, resigned.

"As a matter of fact, I do," Raspiel said. "So let's go sit in your throne room, and compose something, shall we?"


	29. 29

**_Sara; Called away unexpectedly. Please forgive me, my love. For your own sake, it would be best for you to go home to your family. I can't marry you. I expect you to be gone when I return. I am sorry. Jareth_**

Sarah stared at the letter blankly, then read it again. "What the hell?" She closed her fist around the parchment, then uncrumpled it and read it again just to be sure she hadn't imagined it.

"Bullshit," she growled.

Her first reaction was anger, but upon reflection, she started to become worried. Jareth had warned her about returning to the Aboveground—it would be the death of her—it was hard to believe that he would ever suggest she go back, and certainly never for her own sake. And that was only if you discounted their years of history together, their brief battles, and in the end, Jareth's triumph. He had won, and even if she had doubted that he felt anything for her, she knew that his pride would never allow him to let her go. And marriage? What in God's name was that about? They had never once spoken of marriage; quite frankly, it had never occurred to her.

But what bothered her more than all the rest—the crowning stroke of weirdness, you might say—was that endearment; 'my love'. Not because it was not true—on some level it had probably always been true—but because such worn-out phrases as 'my love' and 'I love you' seemed trite and unnecessary between them. She had always gotten the impression from Jareth that he felt the same way. The one time he had ever mentioned love to her, she had been a naive little girl, and he had been trying to manipulate her.

Sarah paused on the threshold to her rooms, sensing something in the darkness.

"Hello, Sarah," Elipsabet murmured from the shadows in the far left corner of the room. She lit a candle, which threw her features into gruesome starkness for an instant, then softened as the wick took flame. "My husband is causing you trouble, isn't he?"

"So it would seem," Sarah said warily. She moved into the room and took the chair opposite the queen. There was a window between them, and a table beside it where Elipsabet set the candlestick. "He has left the Castle. I thought you all did. Why are you not with him?"

Elipsabet shifted her gaze out the window to the star-strewn sky and the moon beyond, her expression sad and pensive. Her eyes still fixed on the night beyond the window, she said softly, almost in a whisper, "Have you ever been in love?"

Sarah sat back and regarded the Fae woman for a moment over her slim steepled fingers. "For nearly half my life, it sometimes seems," she said slowly.

The look Elipsabet shot her was quick and almost angry. "How wonderful for you," she said dryly.

Sarah smiled indifferently and lifted a shoulder. "If you say so."

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Elipsabet's eyes drifted back to the window, but she had lost that dreamy look and now sat straight in the plush chair. Sarah tried to suppress her urgency and made herself relax and wait patiently for the other woman to make her point. That she had a point to make was not in doubt, but, Sarah reminded herself, the Unseelie queen was a courtier, and as such, not given to forthrightness. She would eventually reveal the reason why she had stayed behind, but she would undoubtedly take her own sweet time about it.

Sarah tilted her head back and began humming softly under her breath. It took her a moment to recognize the tune—_Greensleeves_—but when she did, she smiled, remembering how her mother had loved that song.

"And he loves you back, this man of yours?" Elipsabet asked, abruptly breaking the silence.

"Yes," Sarah said, without hesitation.

The Fae woman considered her next words carefully. "You never doubt it? You never wonder, is he thinking of another woman when he's holding you? Is he wishing you were someone else?"

Sarah almost laughed, but managed to suppress it because she thought it would be cruel. "Oh no," she said. "I don't ever wonder that."

Elipsabet met her eyes with a curious expression. "Why not?"

Sarah felt a twinge of empathy for the queen, who had obviously been grossly mistreated and neglected by her husband, but she forced it back and schooled her featres not to show it. She knew that there was nothing that a pitiable person despised more than to be pitied.

"Why not?" Elipsabet persisted.

"Because he waited for me," Sarah said. At the stunned look on the other woman's face, she felt compelled to explain. "I do not mean that Jareth saved himself for me. Do not misunderstand. Celibacy has never been in his nature."

"I do not understand," Elipsabet said.

Sarah sighed and tried to think of a better way to explain it to her. "I know that he has had many lovers before me, and even more, I am sure, since first we met. What I meant, of course, is much more difficult to explain than mere waiting, and a lot of it would not make sense to anyone but Jareth and myself." She paused and nibbled her bottom lip thoughtfully. "You see, he has had other women, been friendly with them, made love to them, maybe even cared for some of them in his way—and I have done the same—but we . . ." Sarah trailed off because she could see that what she was trying to say was not making any sense to Elipsabet, whose lovely arched brows were drawn together in confusion.

Really, she didn't understand how anyone could be so difficult and still be successful at courtly intrigue. Sarah decided to try another tact; one with all the subtlety and finesse of a dull axe. "You asked me if I ever wonder if he's thinking of another woman when he's with me, do you remember?"

"Yes, of course."

"I don't wonder. I don't have to, because I know that when he was holding those other women, he wasn't thinking of her, of the one in his arms. He was wishing she was me."

Elipsabet dropped her head and gave a shuddering sigh, as though she were holding back tears. "Gods, I envy you," she whispered fiercely, her voice trembling.

"And I pity you," Sarah said sadly. "But perhaps we can still be friends."

Elipsabet shook her head, but whether in negation or distress, Sarah could not tell. "But what if you were the only one?" she asked.

Sarah tilted her head to one side curiously. "The only one?" she repeated.

"If you were alone," Elipsabet explained. "If you were in love, but not loved back."

Sarah did laugh then, but there was very little humor in it, so Elipsabet did not take offense. "If I were in love with Jareth, but not him with me?"

"Yes."

"I would be dead," Sarah said simply. She could not imagine that the Goblin King would have extended her the same offer that he had if he felt nothing for her. He would not have answered her call, and she would have died there on the cold tile floor of the Quick Mart.

"Really?" Elipsabet said. She nervously took the packet of Pixy Dust out of her cloak, sprinkled some out into one of her shaking hands, then lapped it up with her tongue. She tilted her head back with a deep sigh of relief. "I'm sorry," she said to Sarah who was watching her with interest.

"It's okay," Sarah said. "I've seen worse." When Elipsabet looked at her kind of funny, she smiled. "I once saw a guy shoot up in his tear-duct. Trust me, that's nothing."

This guy had not been her tragic junkie boyfriend, Henry Cain, but one of his friends. If Sarah had ever caught Henry doing such a thing, whether she loved him or not, she would have dropped him in an instant and never looked back. She suspected Henry knew this too, and that was why he never tried it. She didn't know what had made her think that she was qualified to save him from himself, but he had believed it, and even toward the end, so had she. Everyone had things in their lives that they could not forget. Henry was one of hers, and Jareth was another. But only one of them mattered now; only one of them was still alive.

Sarah fished a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket and lit one. "Besides," she said, "as you can see, I have my own vices." She took a long drag, blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling, then turned her attention back to Elipsabet. "I assume there is some other reason why you are here, other than to discuss the unexplainable mysteries of love."

"I . . ." she hesitated. "I don't know if I should . . ."

"What?" Sarah asked. "Tell me that your husband has abducted my lover?" She laughed, crossed her legs, and leaned forward. "I have already figured that much out for myself." She held up the letter.

Elipsabet took the parchment and smoothed it out on the tabletop to read it. "Oh dear."

"Indeed," Sarah said. "It would seem that your husband has made the all too common mistake of assuming he knows much more than he has any right to." She crushed out her cigarette on the edge of the candlestick and flicked the butt out the window. "I would suggest, if you ever see him again, that you tell him next time he should do a little research. Appearances, you know, can be so deceiving."

Sarah took the letter back and held it up to the flame of the candle. The dry paper darkened, then caught, and she let it fall to the stone floor where it smoldered into ashes. "You are going to tell me where they are," she said.

"What are you going to do?" Elipsabet asked.

Sarah stood, put her hands flat on the tabletop and leaned toward her. Elipsabet shrunk back a little at the feral gleam in her eyes. "I'm going to get him back."


	30. 30

Jareth regained consiousness to the searing bite of a lash across his back. He tensed and instinctively tried to get away from it, only to find that his arms were manacled over his head in iron. The last thing he remembered was signing his name to that damned letter and hoping that Sarah would understand when she read it.

The lash fell again and he hissed. "Raspiel, you bastard," he snarled. He jerked at the chains, though he could see that it was useless. The chain links were thick and heavy, and the manacles were tight around his wrists. "What do you want?"

"My master is not here," Jonas said behind him. He flicked the whip, and Jareth flinched at the loud sinister snapping sound, expecting to be hit again. "He is busy. But don't worry, fairy-man. He'll be back."

"I want to talk to him," Jareth said.

"Sure you do," Jonas said. "And he wants to talk to you too. That's why he had me wake you up."

The lash fell again, and this time Jareth had to bite his bottom lip to keep from crying out. "I'm awake," Jareth said. "You don't have to do that anymore."

"Oh, but I want to," Jonas said and laughed. He drew his whole arm back this time and brought the whip down hard.

Jareth clenched his teeth against the pain and closed his eyes.

"Lookit that," Jonas said with sadistic satisfaction. "Blood."

Jareth opened his eyes. There was a fine spray of tiny red droplets across the stone floor. "Where—where am I?"

"In my master's castle, fairy-man, where else?"

Behind him, Jareth could sense Jonas drawing back for another blow and closed his eyes again_. I am in such deep shit_, he thought, and was almost amused. The lash fell again and again, until the blood that hit the floor no longer fell in mists and droplets, but splashes. He was trapped in the torture chamber of his one great enemy, at the mercy of a sadist who was enjoying himself way too much. 'Deep shit' did not even come close.


	31. 31

Once upon a time, the court of the Unseelie Sidhe had been powerful and vast, a reflection of the Unseelie monarch's power. Now there was nothing left but the Castle in the Rocks, and what little magic remained within its walls was slight and fickle. Raspiel could still host grand parties and balls because the little power remaining to him lent itself to glamour and deception, but the days when the halls of the Unseelie court fairly hummed with magic were gone. That time had passed away as technology and science replaced superstition and ignorance in the Aboveground.

It was understandable then, that Raspiel should wantit back.

"You will give me what I want, Jareth," Raspiel said, pacing in front of him.

Jonas trailed the point of an iron dagger along Jareth's cheek and down his neck to press the tip into the hollow of his throat. Jareth didn't cringe away as he so badly wanted to do because it was useless. He was chained to the ceiling and so exhausted from a hundred different kinds of torture that he couldn't have moved even if he had been free to do so.

"You will give me what I want," Raspiel repeated. He was carrying an iron pointed spear in one hand, and he pointed it at Jareth's chest.

Jareth didn't even tense up when the sharp tip broke his skin and blood trickled down his chest and along his abdomen. He had so many other wounds, worse wounds, that such a small cut was almost nothing. Like a paper-cut.

Raspiel stood back and held the spear at his side like a long-staff as he considered the top of Jareth's bent head. "He's very strong, isn't he, Jonas?" he asked the young man.

Jonas giggled. "Yes, m'lord."

"What are you thinking, Jareth?" Raspiel asked, cocking his head curiously to one side.

Trying to ignore the pain in his neck and lower back, Jareth lifted his head and regarded the king with cold contempt. "I think, if I were you, I'd forget about the magic and put that spear through my heart," he murmured. "Because if I ever get out of these chains, I'm going to kill you."

Raspiel blinked. "Well, you're not me, are you?"

"A fact for which I thank the gods almost daily," Jareth spat.

Raspiel gave a little disbelieving laugh, but stopped when he saw that the Goblin King was completely serious. He walked over, seized Jareth's chin in his cold fingers and forced his head up. He put his face close to Jareth's, so close that Jareth could feel the moisture of his breath on his own lips. "You are one to whom I think death will come slowly, almost reluctantly," Raspiel whispered. "There are so many ways that I can make you suffer without killing you. But before you die, I will have what I want from you. It is not a question of 'if', but 'when', and I can be _very_ patient."

He let go of Jareth's chin and paced away from him a little, then turned back, glaring viciously. "One thing immortality is good for is teaching patience to the impatient, as I'm sure you've learned for yourself."

He waited, but when Jareth didn't even look at him, he continued. "You _will_ give me what I want, Jareth," he repeated yet again. "You are stronger than most, perhaps because you have more to lose, but believe me when I say; any man can be broken."

"I'll have to take your word for it," Jareth mumbled.

Jonas heard him and cackled.

Raspiel did not. "Not all men break easily," he went on, speaking like it was one of his favorite subjects.

It probably was, Jareth decided, because from the look of things, the Unseelie kings dungeons were much more frequently put to use than his own. Jareth fervently wished that if Raspiel was going to kill him or torture him some more, that he would get on with it and stop talking him to death. But then, he reflected, the more the man talked, the more time it bought him to figure a way out.

"But really, it's only a matter of discovering the thing that moves them," Raspiel continued, undaunted by Jareth's apparent disinterest. "The thing for which they would sell their souls. Your young woman, she is lovely, no?"

Jareth tensed.

"Do you think she will be so lovely once Jonas has her to himself for a while?"

Jonas laughed and fingered the tip of his iron dagger eagerly.

Jareth laughed, his voice cracked painfully, but he couldn't help it. "If you had her, you would have already tried to use her against me."

Raspiel and Jonas shared an amused glance. "Jonas, go get our little Sarah for us, why don't you?"

Grinning, Jonas bowed and hurried from the room.

Jareth locked eyes with Raspiel, trying to decide if he was telling the truth, but he couldn't tell. How had they gotten Sarah? It made no sense. If they wanted her too, why did the king make him write that ridiculous note for her?

Jonas returned a few minutes later, leading something on a chain. Jareth forced himself to look, and his heart froze in his chest at the sight before him.

There stood Sarah, lovely and bruised, stripped of her clothing, with a collar around her neck. Jareth's heart began beating again, frantically, when he saw that the collar was the only thing around her neck; the wand was gone.


	32. 32

Sarah stepped back and turned away from the Unseelie queen. Her gaze fell on the wall beside her door, on the poetry scrawled into the stone, left unfinished because she could not remember.

"I arise from dreams of thee," she murmured softly, reading the words engraved there. "In the first sweet sleep of night/ When the winds are breathing low/ And the stars are shining bright." Words that belonged to another time, another place. Most of all, words that did not belong here.

"That's beautiful," Elipsabet said behind her. "Did you make it up?"

Sarah closed her hands into fists at her sides and whirled to face her again. "Tell me where he is."

Elipsabet shrugged. "They are at my lord's palace, of course."

Of course. She should have known that. "How do I get there?"

Elipsabet arched a brow and considered her skeptically. "The usual way, dear."

"Define 'usual'," Sarah snapped.

"Well, you fly, of course."

"Of course," Sarah said hollowly. She crossed her arms over her breasts and tilted her head back with a sigh. Finally she admitted, "I can't fly."

Elipsabet laughed. "Of course you can, dear. Everyone can fly."

That phrase, 'of course' falling from her lips every damn time she opened her mouth was starting to grate on Sarah's nerves. In her experience, the only people who used that term so lightly were those who took most, if not everything for granted. People like the queen who had never had to learn what the true meaning of loss was.

"Everyone," Sarah said patiently, "except me."

"Well that's odd," Elipsabet said. "Is it a mutation of some kind, dear?"

"Something like that," Sarah said. "And for fuck sake, stop calling me 'dear'."

"I do apologize—"

"Look," Sarah said, "are you going to help me or not? Do you know how I can get there without flying?"

Elipsabet considered it, her forehead scrunched up in concentration. "Your Jareth has a scrying glass, doesn't he?"

"If you mean that stupid mirror at the foot of his bed," Sarah snapped. "You already know that he does."

"No need to get testy about it," Elipsabet said. "I'm just trying to help you."

"I don't have time for this," Sarah hissed. "I don't even know why I'm trusting you. It's your husband that—"

"You don't really have much choice," Elipsabet said, her own voice hardening a little in irritation.

Sarah ran a hand through her hair in frustration. "Okay. Fine. What about the mirror?"

"It's a scrying mirror, dear," Elipsabet said, as though talking to an illiterate child. "You can speak through it—"

"I know that."

"Or you can walk through it," she finished.

Sarah suddenly had visions of Alice climbing through the looking glass into Wonderland. She shook her head. "What?"

Elipsabet sighed. "If you—"

Sarah grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the chair. "Show me," she said.

She ran down the tower stairs with Elipsabet close behind her trying to keep up and at the same time, hold her cloak up with her free hand so she wouldn't trip over it. Sarah practically dragged the queen across the throne room, up the stairs, and down the hall to Jareth's rooms. When she finally let go of her hand, the Fae woman was panting and out of breath.

Sarah used the knocker—which cursed her in a language that sounded suspiciously like Mexican Spanish—and pulled Elipsabet into the room. She released Elipsabet's hand and pointed at the mirror. "Show me," she said.

"Well, first . . . you say . . . forgive me, dear, I am a bit winded from our mad dash." She paused to catch her breath, while Sarah waited anxiously.

She could feel her urgency rising with every passing minute. Somewhere, Raspiel had Jareth. Somewhere, things were happening to him. Raspiel wanted something from him, she could guess that much, and he was the kind of man who would go to extreme lengths to get what he wanted. And Jareth, well, she knew how stubborn Jareth could be. Jareth would not give the king anything, and the more Raspiel wanted it, the less likely it was that the Goblin King would give it to him.

Jareth would make Raspiel hurt him.

"Please, please hurry," Sarah whispered.

"Well, dear," Elipsabet said, having regained some of her breath, "first you say the words, and then—"

"What words?"

"The spell to awaken the mirror," Elipsabet said in exasperation. "Really, don't you know anything?"

"I know enough," Sarah snapped. "Why don't you just say them for me and hurry this along?"

"If you like, I suppose—"

"I like. Now say them, and hurry up."

Elipsabet smiled faintly and patted her arm in what Sarah supposed she thought was a comforting way. She turned and addressed the mirror, and spoke in that odd lilting, almost Gaelic language that Sarah had heard Jareth use once before. As she did this, she took Sarah's hand and pressed her palm to the glass. It felt cold at first, like glass should feel, but as the queen spoke; it warmed until Sarah almost drew her hand away. It felt like flesh under her hands, not glass. Still smooth, but somehow _alive_.

When Elipsabet's voice trailed off, Sarah looked at her, but did not quite dare take her hand away incase it would break the spell. "Now what?" she asked.

"Where do you want to go?" Elipsabet asked.

"You already know where—"

"Yes, I know," Elipsabet said patiently. "Now tell the mirror."

"This is just ridiculous," Sarah grumbled. She eyed the mirror warily and took her hand away, relieved that nothing changed. "What is the name of your palace?" she asked Elipsabet. She could not recall ever hearing the place referred to by a name.

"The Castle in the Rocks," Elipsabet replied, smiling a little.

"That's nice," Sarah said. She turned back to the mirror and stared at it. _Mirror, mirror on the wall_, she thought, a little hysterically. Jesus, she had Disney on the brain, and today of all days. "Show me Jareth," she said aloud.

The reflection in the mirror became a flowing blur of images, like watching a movie played at the bottom of a rushing river. She felt her eyes want to cross, but didn't look away. When the images finally stopped and the mirror cleared, for one of the few times in her life, Sarah almost fainted.

"Oh dear," Elipsabet said inanely.

Sarah glared at her. "Are you coming with me?" she asked.

Elipsabet backed a little away from her. "I would help you if I could, but I cannot."

Sarah's eyes, now dark with rage, narrowed. "Why not?"

"Because—" she faltered. "Because I can see it in your eyes that you mean to kill him, and I could not stand by and watch that. Don't ask me to."

Sarah did not try to deny it. Elipsabet was right; what she had seen in the mirror, what she was looking at now—oh yes, if the opportunity presented itself, she would hurt Raspiel for what he had done. And if Jareth were dead—and it looked like that might be a real possibility—she would do her very best to kill him. If he could be killed.

"You're going to stay here then?" Sarah asked her.

"Yes, I think . . . I mean, if that's alright," she said.

Sarah considered for a moment putting the queen in one of Jareth's oubliettes, just to keep her safe, but dismissed the idea for several reasons. The most important reason was that, because there were so many of the damned things all over the Labyrinth, and the maze had this annoying habit of shifting around whenever it felt like it, Sarah was afraid that Elipsabet might become, well, lost. She also thought about putting her in the dungeons while she was gone, but then decided that was probably not very nice when the woman had helped her when, honestly, she really shouldn't have. Then there was the tiny little chance that she and Jareth would not be coming back, and if that should happen, who was going to let her out? Certainly not the goblins. They'd likely think it was great fun to poke at her with sticks through the bars.

"It's fine," Sarah said. "But don't wander into the maze."

Elipsabet looked relieved. "I won't, I promise," she said. "Oh, and Sarah—?"

Sarah paused with her hand once again on the mirror, ready to step through. "Yes?"

Elipsabet shifted nervously and clasped her fingers together in front of her. "You won't tell Raspiel . . . that I . . . well, you won't tell him that I—"

Sarah smiled faintly. "That you helped me?" she finished for her.

"Yes."

"No, my lady," Sarah said solemnly. "I am not in the habit of turning people over to my enemies. It makes for bad friendships."

Elipsabet smiled at her in thanks. "Thank you," she said. "And good luck."

Sarah took a deep breath, then stepped through the glass like she was walking through a waterfall.

_**The poem that Sarah was reading at the begining:**_

'The Indian Serenade' 

_By: Percy Bysshe Shelley_

I arise from dreams of thee

In the first sweet sleep of night,

When the winds are breathing low,

And the stars are shining bright

Iarise from dreams of thee,

And a spirit in my feet

Hath led me -- who knows how? --

To thy chamber window, Sweet!

The wandering airs they faint

On the dark, the silent stream --

The champak odors fail

Like sweet thoughts in a dream;

The nightingale's complaint,

It dies upon her heart;

As I must on thine,

Oh, beloved as thou art!

O lift me from the grass! I die! I faint! I fail!

Let thy love in kisses rain On my lips and eyelids pale.

My cheek is cold and white, alas!

My heart beats loud and fast;--

Oh! press it to thine own again,

Where it will break at last.


	33. 33

Jareth stared at Sarah, who sat on the stone floor in a semi-fetal position with her face pressed against her bare knees. She did not speak to him, and though he had tried to get her to look at him, she would not quite meet his gaze.

Raspiel and Jonas had left them alone for a few minutes—the king probably thought that it would weaken Jareth's resolve to see his lady so . . . fragile and broken.

And indeed, it very likely would have—he hated to admit it even to himself, but he had been tempted to give in. He was in excruciating pain from the wounds all over his body, especially the lash cuts across his back which he knew were still open and bleeding. And he held little hope that even if Sarah should read his note, and understand exactly what he had been trying to alert her to with his blatantly false words, that she would be able to do anything about it. If he only had himself to be concerned about, he might have already given in to Raspiel's demands and relinquished his magic to the Unseelie king. There was cold iron everywhere in the Unseelie dungeon and it made his pulse quicken in animalistic terror. He hated to think that he could be so weak, but he felt drained. Stripped of his powers, temporarily or not, he felt like a wraith.

The only reason that Jareth had not already given Raspiel what he wanted was that his magic was the only thing keeping Sarah alive. Without it, they would both die; for he harbored no illusions at all that Raspiel would allow him to live once he had what he wanted.

"Sarah?" Jareth whispered.

She stirred and lifted her head just enough to look at him over the tops of her knees. "What?"

"Sarah, where's the wand?" he asked.

She stared at him in a confused way with her forehead knitted together thoughtfully. "They . . . they took it," she said finally.

"Is that so," he said. Jareth narrowed his eyes and studied her closely. Her own eyes were almost black, they were so dark. That wasn't right. His Sarah's eyes turned that color, but only in anger or the heat of passion. Fear made them go green. "Sarah?"

"Yes, love?"

_Love?_ His suspicions deepened at that. His Sarah had never in all the time he had known her called him by a pet name. She had called him 'Goblin King' a few times, but only when she was mocking him.

"Are you alright?" he asked her.

Her dark eyes brimmed with tears. "Oh Jareth, I'm so afraid!"

She may have been afraid, but moment by moment, he was beginning to suspect that this woman was not his Sarah. His Sarah did not get meek and whiny in her fear, to the best of his knowledge—and he was in a position to know, having used a hundred tricks and spells aimed to reduce her to just such a state on more than one occasion—His Sarah would have been plotting to find a way out of their situation, the whole time throwing vindictive and extremely colorful insults at the dungeon door that Raspiel and Jonas had disappeared through minutes before. His Sarah would have been cursing like an angry harlot, and she would not have called him 'love' in that simpering sweet way.

He wondered if this Sarah, this glamour Sarah, had an owl tattoo just below and between her breasts. It would be a simple way of confirming his suspicions one way or the other, but she kept her knees tucked up, and he could not remember noticing it when Jonas first brought her in. That was understandable, he supposed, but it certainly would have simplified things a great deal if he could remember. But then, that didn't really confirm anything either, when he thought about it. Raspiel could have glimpsed it that night he surprised them in the mirror. Sarah had been naked, and though only for an instant before she hurried into her robe, it was possible that the Fae had seen the mark.

"Sarah?" he said again, getting an idea.

"Yes, my love?"

_Again with the 'my loves'_, he thought. "Say something Yeats for me, my dear," he said.

She tilted her head to one side and again looked confused. "What's a Yeats?" she asked.

Jareth's eyes flared with triumph and he almost laughed. "Exactly."


	34. 34

Sarah fell out of the mirror and landed with a curse on her knees. She looked around to make sure that the mirror was still there—it was—then shifted her attention to her surroundings.

It took her only a moment to realize that she was in a dungeon, the same dungeon that she had seen in the mirror before she stepped through it. And there was Jareth—though it hardly looked like Jareth—chained by the wrists to the ceiling. He had sagged forward against his bonds, and would have been on his knees if the chains hadn't held him up.

"Jareth?" she said. She got slowly to her feet, then unable to help herself, she ran to him. "Jareth, oh look at you." She cupped his face in her hands and lifted his head.

His eyes were closed, and at her touch and the sound of her voice so near, he squeezed them closed even tighter. "Go away," he whispered. "Leave me alone."

"Christ, Jareth, you look wretched," Sarah said. She tried to get him to his feet, and though he didn't resist her, he didn't try to help either. "Come on, I have to get you out of here."

He opened his eyes then, and she was shocked to see anger in them. Anger at her. Anger that was close to rage. "Get your hands off of me," he snarled.

"What?" She stared. He couldn't possibly want her to leave him here.

"I said don't touch me," he hissed and tried to jerk away from her. "Don't think to fool me with your glamour, you changeling monster. You are not my Sarah, however much you may look like her."

Sarah blinked. She heard a small shuffling sound behind her and turned to see what it was. What she saw made her freeze and her heart leap into her throat. She was staring into the face of another woman, another woman that may as well have been her own reflection.

The creature, whatever it was, hissed at her like an angry python and all resemblance was immediately gone. The face became the face of a hag. Her skin turned bluish white and seemed to stretch grotesquely over her sharp bones, her eyes sank into her skull and became milk white and blank like the eyes of the dead, her fingers became unnaturally long with sharp, wicked claws, and her hair floated around her in a silver nimbus, casting small prismic rainbows like the hairs were made of spun glass. Sarah could not recall ever seeing anything that was at the same time hideous beyond imagining, and yet so dangerously beautiful.

"He is mine," the creature hissed at her. It frightened Sarah to her very bones that that hiss had been uttered in a voice very similar to her own. "He belongs to me."

Sarah glared. "I don't fucking think so," she snapped.

The creature lunged at her, hands out, claws bared. Sarah ducked and leaped out of the way. The thing flew over the top of her and smacked heavily into the floor.

Sarah faced the thing as it got up, crouched a little, her eyes wary and waiting. She expected the changeling creature to attack her again, but it gave a piercing shriek and vanished in a cloud of blue smoke.

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Well, that was easy," she grumbled. "Really, you Underground people have no pride at all. One good hit, or a few defiant words, and your down for the count. It's really very sad."

"I think you will find that not all of us are so easily dispatched," said Raspiel from the doorway.

She turned to face him with a calm air of resignation.

Behind him and just to the left of his shoulder stood Jonas, and he was grinning. "I knew you were human," he said. "I fucking knew it."

"Really?" Sarah said, cocking one eyebrow and putting a hand on her hip. "Now, I wonder, what could have possibly given you that idea. My name? But I already explained that, didn't I? The way I talk?—it's a dead giveaway, I know. Or maybe it's because I knew exactly what you were talking about when you asked me for a Coke. They don't have soft drinks in the Underground, do they?"

Raspiel exchanged a look with Jonas and they both laughed.

"Foolish girl," Raspiel said. "Don't you know humans are property down here?"

Sarah laughed. "But I'm not _your_ property, Raspiel, and that's what counts."

"Yes, yes, yes, you belong to the Goblin King, don't you?" He said, his lavender eyes gleaming maliciously. "But you see, little one, _he_ belongs to _me_."

"Yeah, you and everybody else it seems," she said, her eyes narrowing angrily. "But I've said it before, and my answer hasn't changed; I don't fucking think so. I'm taking him home."

"I'd like to see you try, human," he snarled, striding toward her with his spear in his hand. "Mortals have no power here."

Sarah held up her hand as he drew near and he halted. Her stance alone was an order to stop, but the way she held her hand, fingers splayed and pointed at him, was a clear threat. "I'm taking him home, Raspiel," she said softly, but firmly.

"I can't let you do that," he said. "Your Goblin King has something I want. Something I need if my people are to survive."

Sarah regarded him coldly. "I don't give a flying fuck if your entire whoring race shrivels up and dies for want of magic. I'm taking him home."

"I can't let you do that," he said again.

"Well you're going to anyway."

"Or what?" Jonas asked. "Whatcha gonna do if we decide we want to keep him. Nothin, that's what. You can't do a friggin thing."

Sarah rolled her eyes toward him, but kept Raspiel in the peripheral of her vision. "I gave you that eye," she mused, studying Jonas' one green eye beside the grey one. "I can pluck it out." She summoned the eye from his head, and it ripped from the socket.

Jonas screamed in agony and Raspiel, thinking she was distracted, moved toward her. She turned her head to look him directly in the eyes and he froze. Jonas screamed again, but neither of them looked at him. His eye hovered in the air a few inches away from his face, still attached by a bundle of nerves.

"Tell me again how I don't have any power here," Sarah said to Raspiel. She summoned Jonas' eye to her and it jerked free of the nerves and flew into her outstretched hand. Her gaze still on Raspiel, she turned her hand over and very deliberately crushed it beneath the heel of her boot.

Raspiel looked white and a little ill. Sarah merely smiled at him and waited to see what he would do.

"You bitch!" Jonas screamed. He fell to his knees on the floor with his hand over his bleeding eye socket. "You fucking bitch! I'll kill you!"

Sarah didn't find this threat all that alarming. He hardly seemed to be in any condition to be threatening her.

"How did you do that?" Raspiel finally asked.

She glared at him. "None of your business. Just know that I did it, and I can do it again."

Truthfully, she had not been entirely sure that she could do it the first time until she did it. Because her magic came from Jareth, and he was essentially powerless from the looks of things, she had been a little afraid that nothing would happen. If nothing had happened, she knew that what Raspiel had said would be true; she and Jareth would belong to him. There was nothing she could have done about it. She had risked it simply because she knew that if she did not, the result would be the same.

It would seem that this time, her mortal human blood could be counted a blessing.

"He has more power than I thought if he can bequeath it to you and not be drained by that," Raspiel said with a greedy spark in his eyes.

'Bequeath?' Who the hell said that anymore? "Look," Sarah said calmly, "get out of my way or I'm going to hurt you."

"You think so?" Raspiel smiled unpleasantly. "I don't think so."

Sarah noticed that Jonas had stopped screaming and cursing. She looked to see where he was; make sure he wasn't trying to sneak up on her. He wasn't. He had passed out from the pain.

Raspiel's attack was so swift that she just had time to turn her attention back to him before she was thrown to the ground and the air was knocked out of her. She lay there gasping, cursing her own carelessness, her heart beating in panic, as he laughed. He moved to stand over her and pointed the tip of his spear at the hollow of her throat.

Sarah gasped and his smile widened. He was suddenly very confident with her on the floor at his feet. Such confidence would have seemed appropriate if they were two humans fighting, but not when hehad only a spear and what little magic the Aboveground had granted him, and she had the power of the Goblin King's wand.

She lay there panting, trying to get her breath back. She was more than a little curious to know why he was so sure that he now had the upper hand. She could have just wrenched the spear from his hands with her magic and sent it flying across the room. What did he think was going to stop her from doing that?

"Cold iron, Sarah," he murmured triumphantly.

She lifted a brow at that. "So?"

"Sidhe magic withers before cold iron," he told her. "Didn't your Goblin King tell you that?"

No. Somehow Jareth had failed to mention that part to her. For the first time since she had stepped through the mirror, she was truly afraid.

She turned her head to look at Jareth, who was once again slumped against his chains, head hanging forward, blood running down his ravaged back. He looked so lovely, even broken and bleeding as he was, he was still so beautiful.

She suddenly heard his voice in her head, _Promise me that if it comes down to a choice between them and you, you will be selfish and pick you._

_I can't, Jareth_, she thought in despair. _Please forgive me, but this time, I can't_.

Something occurred to her then as she was laying on her back on the cold stone floor with the tip of Raspiel's spear biting into her throat and Jareth bleeding at the ends of his chains. Something, some little tidbit of wisdom she had read somewhere, in a past life. Her past life.

_It is alright to hope and noble to strive, but in the end . . ._

Not Faulkner or Steinbeck, or anything classical at all. Some popular modern novelist. Peter Straub or Stephen King perhaps. It really didn't matter.

_It is alright to hope and noble to strive, but in the end . . . _

"In the end, it is doom alone which counts," she whispered.

Raspiel looked at her sharply. "Indeed," he said sardonically. "How very true."

Sarah grasped the pointed head of his spear, and using Jareth's magic behind the strength of her own arm, she shoved him back and got to her feet. His eyes widened in shock as he felt her power tingle along his skin and he backed away a little before he could make himself stop.

"Impossible," he said.

"Probably," Sarah said.

"You can't—"

"But I did," she said. "You see, you made one really stupid mistake."

He glared at her and started moving towards her again, spear at the ready. "And what was that?"

"You assumed that my being human put me at a disadvantage." She shook her finger at him in mock reproach. "Don't you know that you should never take anything for granted?"

With a roar, Raspiel lunged at her again, but this time, the spear hit an invisible shield and he stumbled back. In a fury, he started hammering the shield with the iron tipped spear, then suddenly, he stopped and stood there panting and glaring at her.

"Guard!" he abruptly yelled. "Guard!"

Sarah paused on her way to release Jareth and stared as a handful of Unseelie men armed with shining swords and spears, came running into the room. They spread out and began moving toward her and Jareth with their weapons outthrust.

Sarah gave Raspiel an angry look and moved to stand in front of Jareth. She was willing to bet those spears and swords were tipped with iron, and though she could guard herself against them—for the iron apparently meant nothing to her—she did not doubt that in his weakened condition, a deep enough wound from one of them would kill Jareth almost instantly.

When one guard, braver than the rest, or just more foolhardy, edged toward her with his sword in one hand and a short dirk in the other, she snarled at him like an angry she-wolf defending her mate.

He drew back and shared an amused laugh with a few of his comrades. Soon they were daring each other to move closer, just a few more steps, she can't hurt you.

_Silly fairies_, she thought. She threw up her hand as one of them drew too close, then slowly and firmly closed it into a fist. The man made a strangled gasping sound, his back arched, he shuddered, blood flying from his lips, then he fell to the ground like a marionette with cut strings.

The men mumbled between them and shifted uneasily.

"Get them!" Raspiel screamed. "Kill the woman, but not the man. Be careful not to kill the man. I need him."

They hesitated for only a moment, then three of them rushed her at the same time. Sarah killed one, but got no further than that before she was once again knocked to the floor by one of the others.

_My ass is going to be so sore tomorrow_, she thought.

The guard that had knocked her to the ground stood over her and pointed his sword at her throat.

She was really getting tired of people pointing things at her throat.

"Get up," he said.

"Kill her you idiot!" Raspiel screamed. He was really getting quite hysterical.

"What's this?" The guard asked her, ignoring his king. He picked up the wand pendant resting between her breasts and ran a finger down it, caressing it. "Magic," he whispered. "There is magic in this."

Sarah jerked away from him and pulled the pendant out of his hands. The chain snapped and the wand went flying. She watched in horror as it shattered into dust against the stone floor.


	35. 35

Raspiel saw the dismayed look on her face and glanced between Sarah and the shattered powder remains of the wand, then laughed. "So that is where your magic resided," he said. "And now you've lost it."

With a heavy, exhausted sigh, Sarah hung her head. The stone she was sitting on was the deep, dark color of blood. Jareth's blood.

"Oh, come now," Raspiel said. "You can't be giving up? After all your talk, are you so easily defeated?"

"No," she said softly, barely a whisper. One of the guards bent down and grabbed her arm. She jerked it away from him. "No."

"What?" Raspiel asked. "I'm afraid you'll have to repeat that, my dear. I didn't quite catch what you said."

She lifted her head and looked into his eyes. She knew that he was moments away from ordering her death once again, that this perverse catlike playfulness would not last. She resigned herself to it. After all, in a way, she was dead already. She had been dead for months. She had died on the tile floor of that 'shoddy little mercantile' between an isle of cat food and candy bars. Since then, she had been living on borrowed time, and it would seem that her debt had finally come due.

But she would be damned if she was going to just lay there and let him give the order to kill her. "I said no," she told him fiercely.

She slowly got to her feet, and the guards let her, but they didn't retreat.

Raspiel's lips thinned in irritation. "Kill her," he said.

As the swords and spears were thrust at her to do just that, Sarah reacted automatically and threw up a shield. After living so long in the Underground with magic so close to her hand, it was an instinctive reaction, and no one was more surprised than her when it worked.

Her eyes went wide and in her shock, she almost released the shield. She looked to Jareth, who still lay slumped in his bonds. He appeared unconscious, so it couldn't be him. Even if the chains around his wrists were not iron, or if by some miracle, he had become immune to it, it still could not be him.

_What the hell?_ she thought.

"What are you doing?" Raspiel shouted. He was practically foaming at the mouth in his anger. "I said kill her!"

Sarah could feel it now, the way the magic hummed in her blood and along her skin. It was one of the most comforting sensations she had ever experienced, like the caress of a mother's hand. She didn't know how she had come by it, but she knew how to use it, and she didn't hesitate to do just that.

She threw up both of her hands and with a sharp cry, released the magic in a burst. The guards were hurled away from her as though by a mighty hand. Some of them crashed into nearby walls, but most of them fell to the floor and quickly backed away from her.

"You kill me, Raspiel," she said, advancing on the king. "Kill me yourself if you can."

"This cannot be happening," he said between clenched teeth. "You are not Sidhe. You have no magic, no power here, nothing."

"And yet here I am," she said simply, halting a few feet in front of him. "This cannot be happening, and yet it is. I have no power here, and no right to any magic, but as you can see . . ." She let her words trail off and shot a light spark of glitter from her hand for emphasis.

The guards all looked around at each other in a daze, and then, buy some silent agreement, they all got up and made for the door, leaving their monarch to fend for himself. The Unseelie king suddenly roared with rage and leaped at her with his spear aimed at her heart. Sarah backed away, then threw up her shield again, and the spear glanced harmlessly off of it.

Raspiel whirled the spear over his head and smashed it again and again against her shield, like he was trying to batter a hole through the magic. He was screaming unintelligible, Gaelic sounding words as he attacked her over and over again, to no avail.

Abruptly, he stopped. He stood leaning on his spear and glaring at her, trying to catch his breath. "Alright, human," he said. He turned away from her walked quickly toward Jareth's unconscious body. "Alright."

"No," Sarah said. She ran after him and caught hold of the sleeve of his tunic just as he reached Jareth's side.

He threw off her grip and faced her, his body in front of Jareth like he was guarding the Goblin King from her. "I'll kill him," he warned her.

She looked between Jareth; lovely, beautiful, broken Jareth, and Raspiel. Raspiel wanted what Jareth had, but he was enraged. Was his rage more overwhelming than his greed? God, she hoped not, because if it was, he could kill Jareth before she could do anything to stop him, he was that close.

"If you kill him, you will have nothing," she said.

"I already have nothing," he spat.

"But Jareth could give it to you, couldn't he?"

He glared at her with such fury she knew that if he had possessed any kind of power beyond that of glamour and deception, he would have squeezed the life out of her with complete relish. "He could," he said. "But he won't."

She watched him carefully, noting the way he edged just a little away from Jareth, a little closer to her. Good. That was good. "I think maybe he thought he was protecting me," she said.

"I don't believe you," Raspiel snarled.

She shrugged, her eyes on the short distance between Jareth and Raspiel. "Believe what you want."

He hesitated, and moved a little closer to her. She wanted to retreat, but made herself stay still. "So what if he was protecting you? What use is this knowledge to me?"

"If he knows that he no longer has to protect me, he might change his mind." She knew damn well that he would never do any such thing.

Raspiel glanced down at Jareth, then back at her, then back at Jareth, and moved just a little.

_There_, Sarah thought triumphantly, and rushed him. She was not a good fighter, she had never taken any women's self-defense classes, or karate, or even yoga, preferring to lose herself in words and books, so she was not surprised when Raspiel was not caught off guard by her attack at all. He turned, seized the front of her shirt in his fist, and threw her across the room.

She landed heavily and felt one of her fingers snap against the stone. She screamed at the pain and held her hand up to look at it. The finger was bent at an unnatural angle, but as she watched, it began to heal. The bones shifted and reknitted, the skin and sinew moved, and her hand was unharmed.

"My God," she whispered. But she had no time to wonder about that, because her ploy had worked. Raspiel had left Jareth and was coming toward her.

"I'll kill you myself," he shouted as she got to her feet.

He raised the spear over his head and brought it down. Sarah reached out with her magic and caught it in the air, halting its decent. She wrenched it out of his grasp and took it in her hand. She twirled it a little inexpertly, then grasped the end, drew it back, and swung it like a baseball bat.

Raspiel screamed like a banshee as the tip of the spear sliced through his face. The cold iron parted his flesh like it was wet clay and one of his bright purple eyes popped like a peeled grape.

_That's two for two_, Sarah though with grim satisfaction.

Raspiel staggered back, but somehow remained conscious and kept his feet. "My eye!" he shrieked. "You took my eye!"

She pointed the spear at him, let him see his own blood and bits of skin on the tip, and began walking toward him. "Back the fuck up or I'll take the other one," she snapped.

He shuddered, then with an angry cry and a swirl of glitter, took his falcon form and flew out the nearest door.

"No pride at all," Sarah grumbled to herself under her breath. She threw the spear down and ran to Jareth.

"Jareth?" She cupped his face in her hands and lifted his head. "Jareth, open your eyes, damn you."

He groaned and his eyes fluttered. They were unfocused for a moment, then they sharpened on her face and his lips drew back in a snarl. "Get away from me."

"Jareth, it's me," she said patiently. She remembered the changeling. "She's gone, Jareth. She disappeared. Come on, help me get you up. We have to get out of here. Jesus, you're a mess."

"No," Jareth said. He tried to get away from her, but he was weak and she dug her fingers into his arm to hold him up. "Not . . . You're not Sarah . . . Let me go."

"Jareth, knock it off," she said. "You're going to hurt yourself more—Oh Jareth, look at your back. Why isn't it healing?"

"Iron," he panted, getting his feet beneath him. "The lash . . . it . . ."

She looked to where he pointed. On the floor in a pool of his blood lay a thick coiled bullwhip. The tip was a wicked gleaming iron barb.

She suddenly felt like crying, like holding him in her arms and crooning soft love words in his ear, like kissing him all over to banish every mark the evil Unseelie king had put on his body. Instead, she tried to hold him up and unlock the manacles at the same time and almost fell on her ass again.

"Jareth, help me," she pleaded. "How do these—oh, never mind, I got it." The manacles opened with a sharp _snick_ of metal under her hand, but as the second one opened, with only her small frame to hold him up, Jareth collapsed to the floor.

She swiped a hand through her tangled hair and huffed out a breath. "You have to help me," she told him.

"I'm not . . . going anywhere . . . with . . . you," he gasped. He glared at her like she was some kind of biblical demon trying to tempt him. "You're not . . . Sarah."

She fisted her hands in her hair in frustration. She could certainly drag him bodily across the dungeon to the scrying mirror; in his condition, there wasn't a whole hell of a lot he could do to stop her, but he would fight her if she did that. With whatever he had left in him, he would fight her, she could see that on his face.

What could she do to convince him that she was really her. What did she know that nobody else did? She sighed and began reciting, words that had branded themselves into her mind and her heart. "Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered," she murmured, "I have fought my way here to the Castle Beyond the—"

"No!" Jareth's head shot up and he stared at her with piercing mismatched eyes. "Anyone could have told you that. The . . . spell . . . is known to others."

She put her hands on her hips and sighed. "Well then what? What will convince you that I'm me and not some changeling harpy?"

He laughed softly, almost convinced already by her impatient demeanor that this was really his Sarah. He coughed and spat blood on the floor. He held up a hand to stall her when she would have knelt beside him. "Say something Yeats for me, and I'll believe you."

"Yeats?" For a moment her mind went completely blank. He expected her to recite fucking poetry at a time like this? "Okay fine, Yeats," she said, racking her brains for anything at all poetic. He wouldn't know if it was Yeats or not anyway, it just had to sound nice. Strangely though, it was Yeats that came to her mind. "A queen was beloved by a jester," she said, her eyes closed to remember the words that rushed from her lips like water. "A queen was beloved by a jester/ And once when the owls grew still/ He made his soul go upward/ And stand on her window sill./ In a long and straight blue garment/ It talked before mourn was white/ And it had grown wise by thinking/ Of a footfall hushed and light./ But the young queen—"

"Enough," Jareth rasped. "I believe you. Gods below, get me out of here."

She opened her eyes and crouched by his side so that he could brace his weight on her. He wasn't terribly heavy for a man, but dead weight is dead weight, so she was glad she had convinced him to cooperate.

"Where did Raspiel go?" he asked her as they made their slow way to the scrying mirror against the far left wall.

"He flew . . . away," she gasped. "Look . . . can we maybe talk about this . . . later? You're not exactly a . . . featherweight, you know."

"That's just because . . . you're so small."

"Uh huh," she pushed him up against the wall so he wouldn't fall over. "Show me the Castle Beyond the Goblin City," she commanded the mirror. It took her at her word and swirled with images, coming to rest on a landscape of the Labyrinth and at its center, the Castle. Well that wouldn't do. There was no way she was going through the maze lugging Jareth along with her, especially not in his condition. "Okay, okay, what now? Show me Queen Elipsabet of the Unseelie Court," she said.

Jareth looked at her questioningly, but she waved him off. The mirror shifted again, and there was Elipsabet, pacing back and forth in the throne room in front of the gold throne. Her long pale hair was loose and flowing and she looked tired and careworn.

"Good, come on," Sarah said and pulled Jareth forward. She wrapped her arms around his waist and they stepped through the glass together.

**_The poem recited above is the Louis Untermeyer edition and appears here in its entirety:_**

**The Cap and Bells**

**By W.B. Yeats**

A queen was beloved by a jester,

And once when the owls grew still

He made his soul go upward

And stand on her window sill.

In a long and straight blue garment,

It talked before mourn was white,

And it had grown wise by thinking

Of a footfall hushed and light.

But the young queen would not listen;

She rose in her pale nightgown,

She drew in the brightening casement

And pushed the brass bolt down.

He bade his heart go to her,

When the bats cried out no more,

In a red and quivering garment

It sang to her through the door.

The tongue of it sweet with dreaming

Of a flutter of flower-like hair,

But she took up her fan from the table

And waved it off on the air.

'I've cap and bells', he pondered,

'I will send them to her and die.'

And as soon as the morn had whitened

He left them where she went by.

She laid them upon her bosom,

Under a cloud of her hair,

And her red lips sand them a love song.

The stars grew out of the air.

She opened her door and her window,

And the heart and the soul came through,

To her right hand came the red one,

To her left hand came the blue.


	36. Epilogue

Once they had returned to the Goblin City, Jareth seemed to heal fairly well on his own. He stayed in bed for three days—at Sarah's vehement insistence—drank soup, slept, and screamed the damn Castle down when she changed his bandages every morning and every evening.

As the wounds on his back scabbed over and began to heal, his magic slowly returned to him as well. When Sarah told him that the lash marks would probably leave scars, he threw a fit and broke every piece of furniture in his bedchambers. Thereafter, she informed him that he was fit to leave his bed if he could hurl quarter ton solid wood bed across a room, and that from now on, he could by God change his own bandages.

He had apologized for frightening her and she had relented enough to tell him that she thought the scars would be sexy. He was slightly mollified by this, but he still shouted quite rudely at Elipsabet when he saw her later that day.

Elipsabet, who lately was always close to tears, had started wailing loudly

The look on Jareth's face when Sarah came to find out just what the hell was going on was enough to make her wish she had a camera.

Sarah comforted the deposed queen and told Jareth to behave himself or he'd give himself an ulcer.

"First you turn my throne room into a nursery," he said. "And now my entire Castle into some kind of half-way house."

"How can you not know the meaning of the word 'semantics', but you know what a half-way house is?" she asked him.

He had just grunted without comment and walked out of the room, leaving her alone to deal with the heart-broken Unseelie woman.

That same week, when Jareth finally asked her what had happened, Sarah finally told him. It didn't take nearly as long to tell it as she had thought it would. When she was finished, he's just sat there on the bed looking thoughtful.

"Do you understand any of it?" she finally asked him when he didn't say anything.

"I might have an idea," he said.

After that he started venturing to the Aboveground for a few hours every couple of days. He always returned looking grim, but satisfied with himself, and as often as not, would drag her upstairs and make love to her like he might never again get the chance.

After one of these pleasant episodes, she had run her fingers down his sweat damp stomach and asked him what was wrong.

He told her.

Apparently Sarah's book had become something of an urban legend. After the single publication, no book publisher in the world would touch it. Rumor had it that the book stole children. This, of course, made it highly sought after by rare book collectors and did nothing whatsoever to diminish its popularity among crazy teenagers who thought the whole thing was a hoax, but as with everything, were mad to get their hands on one just to see if it really worked. Consequently, even the most dog-eared and shabby copy was worth a king's ransom.

This did nothing to diminish Aboveground belief the Goblin King, in fact, it doubled it many times over. And since Sarah had used her real name as the character in the story, belief and legend had slowly begun to include her as well.

"So that would explain why I don't need your magic anymore," Sarah said.

"I think so, yes."

She was quiet for a long time, then she said, "He's going to come after us, isn't he?"

She did not have to tell him who she meant. "He can't get you here inside the Labyrinth," he said, smoothing his hand down her hair.

"So now I'm even more of a prisoner."

"You were never my prisoner, Sarah."

"I'm not going to hide from him," she said. "Why should I? He ran from me. Let him come for me if he wants."

Jareth sighed and rested a hand gently on the back of her head. What he did not tell her was that Raspiel would come after them, eventually. But he would never come alone, nor would he be the only one to attempt it. The Unseelie king had disciples both Aboveground and below, and they would all hunt her down at his command for a single taste of her blood.

He did not tell her this because he had no intention of allowing it to ever get that far. He had made a promise to Raspiel in that dungeon, and he intended to keep it. He wanted Sarah to be on her guard, but he did not want her to become skittish and paranoid.

"What does this make me then?" she asked him. "I'm not human anymore, am I? So what does that make me?"

He put a finger under her chin and turned her face up to his. "You are so slight," he whispered against her lips. "So small and delicate and beautiful that no one would ever believe how vicious you can be."

She moved up and swung one leg over him to straddle his hips. She took his face between her hands and brushed light butterfly kisses down his forehead, along his jaw, and finally, his mouth. "La Belle Dame sans Merci hath thee in thrall," she murmured with an amused gleam in her eyes.

He laughed and rolled her beneath him. "So it would seem," he said, and kissed her.

/The End/

**_A/N: There is a companion story to this, not very long, and a bit odd, but sort of an offshoot. It describes one of the times that Jareth left Sarah to go to the Aboveground. It is called 'Drunken Conversations of the Immortal Persuasion' if you are interested. I know that I left this story wide open for a sequel, but even though I have enjoyed writing this, I have pretty much lost interest in the Labyrinth fandom, so it is highly unlikely that I will ever write one. Sorry to those of you who were hoping for one, but even finishing this was kind of a struggle for me. Thank you to my constant readers. I am glad that you enjoyed reading this._**


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